


The Light Runners

by AltraViolet



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Blood, Character Study, Death of minor character, Fighting, Gen, Gore, Horror, IDW Gen 1 AU, Pre-War AU, Swearing, violence on par with comics, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-02 07:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20272282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AltraViolet/pseuds/AltraViolet
Summary: Fic-art collaboration for Big Bang Transformers 2019! Artist partner is YamDraws =)Pre-war Cybertron: three powerful city-states connected by underground tunnels with a black market to match, fueled by the whims of the upper class. The latest craze of the past few thousand years? Rare-colored biolight energon. Light runners identify mechs with desirable biolight colors, stalk them, and steal their energon.Jackpot's always lucky... and good thing, too, cuz as a light runner, his job is dangerous. His preternatural luck has saved him more than once. But that luck comes at a price.Jackpot's always lucky... until he's not. After failing his latest mission, he's punished with an impossible task. Partnered up with the opportunistic Shadow Striker, Jackpot must bring back a vial of the golden blood of Primus from the depths of the world. The only problem? That gold blood is a myth. And no one who's ventured down that far into the tunnels has ever returned...





	1. The Light Runners

**Author's Note:**

> My Big Bang artist partner is YamDraws! Please check them out, their art style is SO CUTE:  
  
[Yam on tumblr](https://yamdigs.tumblr.com)
> 
> [Yam on twitter](https://twitter.com/YamDraws)
> 
> Art will be embedded in chapter 1, but you can also find it here on Yam's tumblr: [LINK](https://yamdigs.tumblr.com/post/187060572089/my-pieces-for-the-tfbigbang-project-from)
> 
> Additional note: the Shadow Striker in this fic is based off the one from the G1 continuity family (Universe), not Cyberverse/IDW2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Big Bang artist partner is YamDraws! Please check them out, their art style is SO CUTE:
> 
> [Yam on tumblr](https://yamdigs.tumblr.com)
> 
> [Yam on twitter](https://twitter.com/YamDraws)
> 
> Art is embedded in this chapter, but you can also find it here on Yam's tumblr: [LINK](https://yamdigs.tumblr.com/post/187060572089/my-pieces-for-the-tfbigbang-project-from). Thank you for joining me, Yam! =)

“Oh Primus, he's here! That's him!” Bluestreak kept his voice to a whisper, but his field flashed with excitement. He gripped the railing of the mezzanine and stuck his head between the support bars. Jackpot ducked under his doorwings just in time (-1%) as they swung forward. Bluestreak held a patterned glass lens up to one eye, squinting through it at the two mechs below. “He's the real deal!”

“Yup,” said Jackpot, easing back on his stiff legs. He and Bluestreak crouched between broken stereo and lighting equipment, rusty energon tanks and other assorted stuff shoved up onto the mezzanine. Chaotic, messy, and a total fire hazard. Typical for the backstage of a light club. Jackpot saw the same thing in every other club he'd crouched, hidden and stalked his prey in. He heard the same music, too. Heavy bass vibrated the metal supports, leaking in through the walls from the dance floor proper. Jackpot touched the railing. It buzzed against his fingertip in time to the beat. “Good song. Easy on the audials but heavy on the infrastructure.” His companion shrugged. “You got your spectrum overlay on? Check him out.”

“Yeah! Wow, never seen RP-12 in a mech before.”

Jackpot grinned. With a processor command, a patterned lens like Bluestreak's rose behind his visor. It had been expensive and painful to install, but it was worth it. The backstage/storage area darkened to rich grays and blacks, save Bluestreak's biolights and the biolights of the two mechs standing below them. They blared like neon signs. With another command, a rainbow gamut appeared at the top of Jackpot's vision. Reticles centered on the biolights, spinning their inner metrics until they displayed a readout. Each biolight was identified by two symbols, the first describing its color and the second its rareness. The smaller mech had red biolights, denoted R-1. The 1 defined it as being very common.

The larger mech's reddish-purple biolights were identified as RP-12, the rarest of them all.

A wave of excitement fluttered through Jackpot's chest, strong enough to squeeze his spark a bit. Bluestreak's doorwings bounced. It was hard not to grin madly at a color like that. “_RP-12!_ Nearly mythical. We're staring at a mech-shaped pile of shanix.”

“Hell yeah.”

The tell-tale glitter of altered or enhanced energon was completely missing from their biolights. Unlike most of the mechs who came to light clubs, they hadn't ingested or injected any foreign energon into their systems. “They're _both_ pure,” whispered Bluestreak. “Interesting.”

“Yeah.”

“The red-lit one has yellow eyes, though.”

“Yup.” Jackpot shrugged. “It happens sometimes. The rich don't like the taste of optic fluid, though.” Jackpot suppressed a shudder. The thought of jabbing mechs in the eye with the tool of their trade made him queasy. That was more black diamond mech style. Jackpot was no black diamond mech. “Delicious biolights only.”

Bluestreak nodded. “What're their names?”

Jackpot gave a low chuckle. “Vorp is our target. The other one is Mesmer.”

_“Vorp?!”_

“I know. Heh. Most likely stage names.” Jackpot pointed to one of the many posters stuck to the wall below. It was a faded picture of Mesmer and Vorp, each half disappearing with a cheap editing effect, grinning at the camera. “I haven't been able to find either of their civilian identities and I've been tracking Vorp for months. His description doesn't match anything I can find in public or private records. And Mesmer is _always_ with him. I think they only come to the club when they need the money. There's no set schedule. It's been a pain in the aft trying to figure out when they'll perform next. I only knew they were gonna be here tonight cuz I was already scoping out the place when Vorp showed up.” Jackpot usually worked alone, but this target had proven so elusive, he'd comm'd Swindle for backup the second Vorp had appeared. Swindle had sent Bluestreak. Jackpot would have to share a portion of the reward with him, but he didn't mind. Bluestreak was competent, personable, and most importantly of all, had a sleek frame with doorwings that bounced when he got excited. “Thanks for coming. Swindle's been pushing me about this for a solid week.”

Bluestreak nodded. “Why don't you track them after they leave to find out more?”

“I've tried.” Jackpot scratched the edge of his camouflaging paint. It was new tech and didn't work very well to disguise his shiny gold plating. He looked like a dark, greenish blue mech whose paint had scuffed, revealing bronze underneath. The camo tech worked a lot better on Bluestreak, whose blue and red plating was rendered in deep grays. Together, they skulked like a couple of hearses in the shadows. “They're exceptionally good at the ol getaway after their performance. If I didn't know any better, I'd say they could straight up vanish.”

“Pff.” Bluestreak tilted his head side to side, lining up his internally projected rainbow gamut with the lens he held. “Mesmer's shade of red is... common.”

“Yeah.” Jackpot retracted his runner's lens. The cramped, dirty backstage area blossomed back into full color.

The two mechs below were talking softly, both gorgeous against the peeling club wall behind them. Vorp was big, black and red, and had horns Jackpot would kill for. He held his smaller companion close. Mesmer was covered in so much glitter and wrapped in so many strings of tiny lights that Jackpot wasn't sure what color he was. White and blue, maybe. Glitter fell from his frame when he moved. Jackpot was surprised his vents weren't clogged to the Pit with the stuff. Vorp's hands and arms were already sparkling with streaks of it.

“If you miss Vorp, you can always jab Mesmer and we'll at least have _something_ to give Swindle. Pure R-1, not too bad.”

“'If I _miss?”_ Jackpot clutched his chest dramatically. “When the hell have I ever _missed?”_

“Oh, let's see,” said Bluestreak, settling back onto a cracked speaker. He carefully tucked his runner's lens into a soft pouch and hid it away. “You're the best but you're not perfect.” His doorwings flattened in mock concentration. “There was the Blue Prism last year, the Springtrap Hole the year before-”

“So?! Only once per year! That's pretty good! What is that, like, a 0.64% failure rate-”

“Shh!”

The target and his glittery companion glanced in their direction. Jackpot and Bluestreak froze.

Mesmer patted the decorative lights on his partner's chest and reset his vocalizer. He spoke so softly, the two light runners leaned forward to hear him. “I think perhaps we have an audience. If we weren't up next, I'd be tempted to leave.” He had the kind of accent Jackpot associated with penthouse suites and tiny fluted glasses filled with rare energon, arranged in rainbow order on silver platters.

“Nah, we can't leave,” said Vorp. _He_ had the kind of accent Jackpot associated with haulers and freight transporters. “Think of the shanix. I can't wait to throw you across the club.”

“Very well. You look _marvelous,_ darling,” said Mesmer. He motioned for Vorp to bend. Mesmer nudged the horns back, tweaking the strings of tiny lights that wound around them. “Are the magnets wearing off?”

“Nah. Don't think so.” 

Jackpot's visor flashed. “Damn,” he whispered. “I thought the horns were real!” _That explains why I couldn't find his description in the records..._

“What? _Really?”_ Bluestreak glanced at him. “Those are _obviously_ fake. No one has horns like that.”

“Sure they do!”

“Who?”

“You know... the guy...” Jackpot's mind went blank. “I've seen 'em on mechs before.”

“What, that big?”

“Yeah!”

“Pff. No, you haven't. Shut up, we're losing focus.”

Jackpot returned his attention to the targets. Vorp and Mesmer were running their hands down each others' frames and kissing so deeply, Jackpot felt like he should be paying a voyeur's fee. “What are they, newly conjunxed?” he whispered. “Who _does that_ in the back of a run down light club? It's like something out of a cheap romance story.”

Bluestreak rolled his eyes.

“You could probably get a disease just leaning against that wall-”

“Shh!”

As the two pulled their faces apart again, Mesmer smiled. “You've got glitter all over you, darling.”

“Heh. Not _all over._ Not _yet.”_

“Okay, that's all I can handle,” whispered Jackpot, ignoring the tiny flame of jealousy in his chest. He stood, carefully, quietly, and swung one leg around the railing. “I'm getting a needle.”

“What? _Now?_ We're not in position-”

“Plan beta one-two!” hissed Jackpot. 

“That's not a real plan. You just made that up!”

Jackpot pulled a vial from his subspace compartment. “Go go go!”

Bluestreak flared his field in annoyance. He edged away from the railing and crept down the length of the mezzanine, pulling his doorwings down.

Jackpot grinned. He swung his other leg around the railing and prepped the needle assembly attached to the vial. It was a complex thing: two needles and nearly indestructible. One needle connected to a small reservoir of liquid tranquilizer, the other lead into the vial itself. Jabbing a mech with the first needle made the assembly invert so the second needle could draw out biolight fluid. It was easy to use. Stab and hold. It could puncture the thickest metal plating or the most delicate biolight glass without shattering either. And the tranquilizer made sure the target wouldn't resist. It didn't chemically harm the target, though there was a _nasty_ hangover feeling afterwards. Jackpot glanced over. Bluestreak was lowering himself down the rusty ladder on the far end. When he got to floor level, he gave Jackpot a scarcely-visible thumbs up from the shadows.

Showtime.

Jackpot grinned and set the vial between his teeth. Out of habit, he checked his fuel gauge level. It was a permanent feature of his HUD, displayed over his vision at the top right. 92%. 

“We're almost up,” said Mesmer. “One last kiss, darling.”

As Vorp leaned down, Bluestreak blurred at the edge of Jackpot's vision-

** _CLANG!_ **

Mesmer jumped. Vorp growled. 

“Runners?” whispered Mesmer.

“Fucking runners,” said Vorp. He glared around the area, pushing Mesmer behind him. “Get outta here. I'll find you outside.”

Perfect. That was exactly what Bluestreak and Jackpot had been going for- separating the two so they could get Vorp by himself. Mesmer gave one last breathy farewell and stepped into Vorp's shadow and-

_vanished-_

Jackpot reset his visor. _What the hell?!_ He craned his neck, scanning the area around Vorp for the smaller mech, but he was _gone_-

** _CLANG!_ **

Bluestreak's second distraction. Jackpot readied himself to jump down all badass.

Vorp turned towards the distraction, biolights flashing, fists and wings rising. Jackpot startled as the big mech's field brushed out against him with anger. Most mechs' fields didn't extend that far from their bodies. He must be _powerful._ Jackpot pulled his own field in tight. 

“Who's there?” shouted Vorp, spreading his wings.

A burst of multi-colored light appeared at the far wall. Music swelled and died away again as the door opened and closed by itself. Vorp glanced at it, then raised his fists. “Well??”

Well, indeed.

Jackpot pulled the vial from his mouth, jumped, and aimed his body like a dart. Time seemed to slow. Vorp turned, his rage changing to surprise as a bundle of shadows detached itself from the mezzanine and hurtled towards him. Jackpot grinned. No matter how fast Vorp was, he was too big to get out of the way. And he was _definitely_ no match for Jackpot's special gift.

_It's almost too easy_, thought Jackpot, as the big mech's eyes rounded and his hands came up defensively. Jackpot selected his target, the biolights going down Vorp's torso. They'd fill the vial up quickly. Jackpot nudged his fall ever so slightly. Of course he'd hit his target. He hit every target. He didn't even have to think about it.

Jackpot stretched his arm out and bent his legs, ready to land on the mech's chest and slam that needle into him the second he hit the floor. _Finally,_ he thought. _After all this goddamn time-_

There was a blinding flash of purple and white light. Vorp _disappeared_.

“AHH!” The shock of the flash and the disappearance startled Jackpot out of his time-slowed stupor. He twisted in midair, hit the floor, stumbled, and rolled at _just_ the right angle to not stab himself with the needle.

“What the hell was that?!” yelled Bluestreak. Jackpot shook his head as his partner ran over, his doorwings flat against his back. His camo paint flickered as he looked frantically around the room.

“No fucking clue!” Jackpot snapped the guard over the needle. He was lucky he hadn't stabbed himself when he'd hit the floor. The sedative was a glitch to recover from. Jackpot glanced at his fuel gauge. 86% _Six percent loss?! Damn._ Even after all these years, Jackpot couldn't quite figure out the exchange rate-

“He fucking _disappeared!”_ Bluestreak's field was awash in shock and a little fear. “Is this a set up?! What the _fuck!”_

Jackpot hauled himself to his feet and subspaced the vial. “The other one disappeared, too. But not in a flash of light.”

“What _is_ he?” Bluestreak grimaced. “Do you think he saw us?”

“I dunno what he is. His field was really powerful.” Jackpot shook himself. Being sighted was bad. Light runners whose identities were compromised were usually taken off the market, so to speak. “He saw me. Well, part of me. Don't think either of them saw you, though.”

“Shit,” said Bluestreak. He stared into the distance until Jackpot grabbed his shoulder.

“Snap out of it! Maybe they're on the dance floor. Let's go.”

“Their act... it's called the disappearing act,” said Bluestreak. He pointed to the poster. “I didn't think they actually _could!”_

“Me either,” said Jackpot. “But we gotta find 'em. Come on. Vorp's got shanix flowing through his lines and I want it.” He pushed Bluestreak towards the door. “Get your runner's lens out, we'll scan the dance floor and-”

An unexpected comm burst through Jackpot's processor. He froze.

.:Get back here, kid. ASAP:.

“-uh.” Jackpot squeezed Bluestreak's shoulder. “Wait. Swindle's called me back.”

“That's probably not good,” said Bluestreak. His doorwings inched upwards. “How did he know you missed?!”

“I didn't _miss,”_ said Jackpot. “Vorp _cheated.”_

“Yeah, okay.” Bluestreak wrung his hands. “But Swindle didn't call for _me,_ did he?”

Jackpot groaned. He'd be returning by himself. “Nope.”

Relief flooded through Bluestreak's field. “Good luck with that.” Bluestreak gave Jackpot a lopsided smile. “Like _you_ need it.”

“Shut up,” said Jackpot. “See ya around.”

“See ya.” Bluestreak ran for the trapdoor.

Jackpot pushed the door to the dance floor open a crack. Music and lights and fake fog flooded into the backstage area. Hundreds of mechs were dancing and shouting, their bodies colliding under strobe lights. Their fields blended into a pulsing wall of good feelings. Jackpot didn't bother to raise his runner's lens. There was no way he would be able to find Vorp and Mesmer in that crowd. He scowled.

“Next time,” he muttered. 

Jackpot reluctantly went to the trapdoor and lowered himself beneath the floor. He walked through the light club's basement storage until he reached a section of wall unblocked by broken equipment. There was a garish painting of Primus bestowing a matrix-shaped vessel filled with engex to the light club owner. Hidden in the vessel was a recessed button. Jackpot pushed it. The wall pulled aside, revealing a tunnel carved into the metal of Cybertron itself, faintly glowing yellow. He sighed. No sense wasting energy keeping the camo on. The scratchy dark tech staticked off, revealing his glossy, golden plating. Jackpot transformed and took off towards Swindle's safe house.

~~

**The three rules of the tunnels:**

1) pull over for everyone above you  
2) pull over for the black diamond mechs. _Always._  
3) never, _ever_ touch the yellow crystals.

~~

Jackpot sped down the tunnel, passing the lumbering malforms and grunts that pulled over for him, and pulling over, in turn, for the black diamond mechs. Cybertronians were made to be classed and everyone knew exactly where they were in the hierarchy. All those ugly mechs with weird vehicle modes that were too slow or didn't have enough cargo space to be useful aboveground- the malforms- they moved the usual stuff. Illicit goods, orphaned software, money. He raced past those nulls without giving them a second glance.

As a light runner, Jackpot was near the top. Blood, light, energon- they all meant the same thing, and the acquisition of biolight fluid was the most lucrative of the secret businesses. Entrepreneurial mechs had tried to manufacture imitations, but they faded quickly and didn't sparkle like natural light did. Light runners were the key to keeping the flow of biolight fluid going. They identified mechs with desirable colors, stalked them, and stole their energon. They transported it across the vast underground system of caves and tunnels to safe houses for packaging and distribution. Jackpot didn't know how the fad had started, but once the upper class decided injecting other mech's blood into their own glassy biolights was fashionable, the market created itself. 

Of course, when you have a system of tunnels connecting three aboveground cities, each with its own government and cultural norms, things could get confusing. So everyone had tattoos, only visible through a runner's lens. In robot mode, the tattoo was on the neck, and there was a certain tilt of the head mechs did when introducing themselves so it was visible. Mechs aboveground would never know it was anything more than a glance to the side, but Jackpot could pick that greeting out from across a crowded bar. He himself had a green symbol for shanix on his neck, signifying that he was part of Swindle's family, and a red drop next to it, the light runner signifier.

Jackpot glanced at the tunnel walls, double checking his position. Between the omnipresent, glowing yellow crystals were spray painted symbols, codes for location and who was allowed where. He came to a fork, a flat tire symbol on the left and a broken wing symbol on the right. Something about the tunnel to the left was dangerous for grounders- either sudden, cliff-like drops or tire-destroying debris on the tunnel floor. Something about the tunnel on the right was dangerous for fliers- the ceilings were too low to safely fly through or the yellow crystals jutted out at unpredictable angles. Jackpot veered to the right. It was a short jaunt until the two tunnels united up ahead at an area safe for all. 

It was easier to move around dangerous places than carve new tunnels through them. No one wanted to deal with the yellow crystals. It's not like there was a specialist team funded by the entire underground that would take on that responsibility. It would take a miracle to get the two mechs at the very top to agree on anything, let alone that.

Jackpot pulled over again as a couple of black diamond mechs approached. They moved silently, one tank, one jet. As they passed, fields of pure terror washed over him. They were transporting captives, so scared that their fields leeched out of the black diamond mechs' plating. Jackpot looked away. He felt bad for them.

~~

Jackpot knocked on the trapdoor. A specific pattern of footsteps above indicated that Swindle was alone and it was okay to enter. Jackpot shoved the trapdoor upwards and reset his visor. Swindle's safe house wasn't brightly lit, but it was much brighter than the tunnels. Jackpot heaved himself upwards. 

“Hey, kid,” said Swindle. He was leaning over his table instead of sitting. His back was to the trapdoor. That wasn't like him at all. Was he shaking? His field let out a nervous vibe.

Jackpot wasn't sure what to make of it. Best to approach in a nonchalant, easygoing way. He slammed the trapdoor shut and sauntered over to the table. It was covered in loose shanix and data pads, records of all the different types of biolight fluid Swindle's runners had gathered over the years. There was a conspicuous lack of RP-12. Jackpot winced inwardly. He slapped on the sleazy business grin he'd learned from Swindle. “Hey!”

“Where's Bluestreak?”

“Uh... You didn't ask for him specifically so he split.”

“Hrmm. Didja get the rare stuff or what?”

Jackpot's grin fell. “Uh... mmm... you're probably not gonna believe me, but the target... _vanished._ I have _no idea_ how he did it. I jumped down to jab him and he _disappeared_ in a flash.” Jackpot flared his field out meaningfully. “Powerful mech. Maybe one of those outliers. Or something.”

Swindle shook his head. He flipped a shanix between his fingers. _click click click._ Light caught in the carvings around its edges. 

But he didn't express shock or disbelief about Jackpot's story, or even yell at him for failing the mission.

_That_ wasn't a good sign.

Jackpot leaned on the table, pushing the data pads aside so the blank RP-12 record was conveniently obscured. “What's got _you_ rattled?”

“I told- I told 'em I didn't wanna send you,” said Swindle. He glanced at the door.

“Told who? What?” Jackpot tilted his helm. “You're not mad I couldn't get the RP-12?”

“She's called for you specifically,” Swindle hissed between his teeth.

“Who?”

_click click click_

Swindle grimaced and nodded at the wall. There was a pink wing sigil burned into it, the symbol of Esmeral. It had been lasered there the day Swindle had allied himself with her. He had a matching tattoo on his neck.

Jackpot's lines ran cold. “Uh- uh-”

“Pull yourself together, kid,” said Swindle. He pushed a swath of table clear and balanced the shanix on its thin end. It wiggled and fell over. He picked it up again. “For Primus's sake, don't run,” he said softly. “There's a you-know-what waiting outside for you. He's gonna take you there.”

_A you-know-what..._

“Fucking _hell,”_ said Jackpot. He backed away, feeling for the trapdoor with his foot. He glanced at his fuel gauge. 84%. Great. He was sure he could get a pretty good distance away from the safe house before whoever was outside even realized he was gone. Even if the penalty for a lucky escape was 50%, he'd still have enough fuel to get home-

_“Don't_ flatter yourself,” said Swindle. He grabbed Jackpot's arm and yanked him towards the tanks on the wall. “Fill up, _quick,_ then get your aft out there.”

It wasn't like Swindle to offer free fuel, but Jackpot wasn't about to argue. “...okay.” He selected the finest grade. Swindle narrowed his eyes but didn't stop him. Jackpot grinned and stuck the hose in his mouth, not even bothering to get a glass.

To his utter surprise, Swindle didn't smack him. He just kept glancing at the door and spinning the shanix between his fingers.

The whole thing weirded Jackpot out to the core, but he was determined to enjoy his free fill-up. When he finally finished with an irritating smack of the lips, Swindle pushed him to the door. “Bye, kid,” he said. He shook his head. “Guess I shouldn't have to tell you this, but good luck.”

“Thanks-” and Swindle shoved him outside. The door slammed shut behind him.

Jackpot reset his visor. It was just after sundown and the street was dark. He took a deep breath. Aboveground did have one thing going for it: it usually smelled better than below. As he waited for his optics to adjust, the cold fringe of someone else's field brushed against him. He jumped. Jackpot heard the hiss of vents behind him, then a lingering, breathy voice that made the plating of his body contract.

“Hhhhhurry uuuuuup...”

A huge hand thudded down on Jackpot's shoulder. He squeaked. 

The huge hand whipped him around and he was staring up at the meanest yellow eyes he'd ever seen. The mech was matte blue with an orange face and black helm. He had the tell-tale uneasy energy of a triple changer; that feeling of layers and layers of plating just aching to burst apart and transform. 

The mech tilted his head to the side with an inviting wave. His field flowed with a cruel mirth. Jackpot flashed his runner's lens up.

A solid black diamond. 

It glittered. 

Jackpot had never seen one up close before.

Fear washed through him. It leaked out into his field before he could stop it.

“Hhhhehhh.” 

The mech's breathy laugh crept under his shoulder plating. It reminded Jackpot of tires echoing between the slimy walls of the deep tunnels. He shuddered. The mech wasn't rocking any mods or sparkling biolights, but there was blood dripping from some of his seams. Adventures from earlier in the day, probably. No wonder Swindle had told him not to run. This mech could've tracked and found him in an instant and would've loved any excuse to bring him back in more than one piece.

“Uh, hey,” said Jackpot. Then, before he could stop himself, “I mean, hhhhhhheyyyyyy.”

The black diamond mech laughed again. He yanked Jackpot off his feet and transformed around him, a flurry of pink, purple and blue metal and a flash of amber glass. Jackpot was entombed in the darkest, most claustrophobic trunk he'd ever been shoved into. 

“No! _Hey!_ I'm fully functional! I can drive myself!” Jackpot banged against the walls of the trunk. _“Let me out!”_

The mech laughed all around him. With an audial-splitting screech, they drove off into the night.

~~

“Thank you, Roadgrabber.”

Jackpot groaned as his captor transformed around him, extracted him none-too-delicately, and dropped him to the ground. He pushed himself up and shook his head. Jackpot discreetly checked his frame for blood. There had been some... other things in the trunk with him. Luckily (-1%) he was clean.

Roadgrabber's plating shuffled back and forth until it settled into place. Pink and purple disappeared beneath the matte blue. He stood just behind Jackpot, breathing audibly, his field twitchy.

Jackpot took a moment to get his bearings. Given the length of the ride (about two hours, judging by the 4% fuel loss, although it had felt like five years) and the various stops and turns, Roadgrabber had taken him through the tunnels to... this place. An enormous underground cave. Or rather, it had started as a cave, but had been reinforced with columns and decorated with carvings and strings of multi-colored lanterns. There was a travel-worn aisle down the center of the chamber. Standing at attention, three to a side, were grim-faced guards of varying frame types. The ceiling décor, strands of lights, and the aisle all drew the eye to the huge statue at its far end.

No... it wasn't a statue. It was a _mech_. She was more than twice Jackpot's height, pitted chrome and purple and pink. A feathery wing sprouted from her left shoulder and Jackpot surmised her alt mode was some kind of flying beast. She had a beautiful face and black eyes. No, her eyes weren't black, they were shut... Jackpot squinted. No, they weren't shut... they didn't look right. Jackpot engaged the zoom feature in his visor. 

Her eyes had been _ripped out of her face._ Claw marks ringed her empty ocular holes. Jackpot grimaced. He wondered how she could see. Then movement above her optic arches caught his attention. There was another set of eyes there- red and alive.

Esmeral.

Jackpot didn't know she was so _big_. Of all the things he'd heard- pink wings, fierce doubled eyes- he'd never heard she was so tall. He hadn't heard about her injury, either. Her right arm and right wing were mangled and fused. It looked like a powerful blast had struck her, forcing her upraised arm back onto her wing and melting them together, and then melting both to the wall. Long strands of metal feathers melted around the arm like a clenched fist. It couldn't be comfortable, forced to stand like that. Unable to step away or even to transform. Jackpot wondered why she hadn't ordered her bodyguards to cut her free from the wall.

The mangled, melted hand stuck above her head twitched.

There was something in the remains of its fingers.

“Jackpot, _welcome._ Did you have a _nice_ journey?” Her voice was calm and low, with a strange melodic sweetness to it. It filled the chamber.

“Uhh...” Jackpot couldn't stop staring at her fingers. What was she holding? 

Roadgrabber smacked him. 

“Y- yeah, everything was fine.” He glared at Roadgrabber, then raised his runner's lens.

Holy _shit_.

Esmeral's body lit up with dozens and dozens of colors, sparkling and shimmering throughout her lines. She was absolutely _full_ of different kinds of blood. The rainbow gamut reticules jumped and spun. The only time Jackpot had ever seen anything like it was when he'd transfused five different biolight fluids in one night and looked in the mirror.

The greatest concentration of colors was in her melted hand. As he zoomed in, Jackpot realized what she was holding.

An _eye_.

Glassy biolights burrowed from the eye into her melted flesh.

_Why did it have to be an eye._ Jackpot stifled a shudder and returned his gaze to her face. 

“Good,” Esmeral said. She smiled like a sedated scraplet. “Do you know why you're here?”

“Uhh...” Jackpot glanced at the bodyguards. They were all glaring at him. “Not very happy with Swindle at the moment?”

She gave a high class laugh. “Dear Swindle knows how to make me happy, but he rarely does it. So no, I am not happy with him.” She studied Jackpot, her bestial eyes narrowing. “Forged golden? That's a good sign. No _wonder_ you're lucky.”

“How did you know about that?!” Jackpot's hands flew to his chest. His preternatural luck was known to a few of Swindle's runners, but other than his underground family, he'd managed to keep his advantage quiet. Or at least, he thought he had. Did she know more...?

Esmeral waved away his question with her free hand. “Swindle has disappointed me _so_ many times. He promised me RP-12 ages ago, but he has yet to deliver. There's something you will do for me to pay off your master's failure.”

“What?! Why do _I_ have to-”

Esmeral gave him a sharp glare. Roadgrabber laughed his slimy laugh and smacked Jackpot on the side of the head.

“Ow!”

“When I sent Roadgrabber to collect Swindle, he offered _you_ up to me instead. He said if anyone could get it, you could. He said you were _special.”_

Jackpot clenched his fists. _Fucking Swindle,_ he thought. _No wonder you let me fill up on the good grade. You felt guilty about it!_ Disappointment squeezed his spark. _So much for loyalty to the family! You bastards were the only one I had._

“I am sending you on a mission, one that every mech who has gone before you has failed.”

“But-!”

“Shh,” said Esmeral. Her tone belied a growing impatience. “They were some of my strongest, my bravest. My smartest and fastest. You are none of those things. But they were missing something that you have.”

Jackpot grit his teeth.

“One of my personal bodyguards will accompany you.” Esmeral waved her free arm gracefully. 

A green jet stepped forward, pulling a sword from a sheath on his back. He was smooth and polished, with expensive decals along his well-defined seams and holographic paint around his red eyes. He regarded Jackpot with a quirk of the lips. 

_Oh my godddd,_ thought Jackpot. The jet flicked his wings. _That's the hottest thing I've ever seen. Maybe it won't be all bad._ He grinned to himself. _The only silver lining in this whole dark cloud. Maybe I'll get luckier than usual._

“Ah, not you, Acid Storm,” said Esmeral.

Acid Storm blinked and his flawless face pulled into a shocked expression. He turned toward her, the tip of his sword scraping across the floor. “What? But boss, you said I would be-”

“Shadow Striker will accompany Jackpot.”

“What?!” both Acid Storm and a hulking malform in the guard line up shouted. 

The malform's face puckered as she stepped forward. Jackpot felt his hopes of a hookup melt away and his panels clench together. She was _something_ alright, and what that thing was, was mostly inside-out. She was a powerful land vehicle, at least a head taller than he, her hot rod engine plastered right there on her chest. It was silver, glistening against its blue backing and the gold of the rest of her torso. Her shins and face were gold, her feet were blue, and the rest of her was matte black.

But her weird color scheme was the least of her problems. Jackpot gaped, unable to look away. The runner's lens in his visor popped up and down. He had never seen a mech with an _entire vehicle canopy and windshield_ hanging off the back of _one_ arm as kibble before. Her whole rear bumper hung off the other arm. And those thighs...! They were no more than inverted wheel wells! Shadow Striker wasn't a mech that transformed. She was a mech who turned inside-out and somehow walked on two feet afterwards. A total malform.

Jackpot wouldn't even have registered her as background noise if he saw her on the street. 

“Boss?” she asked uncertainly. Shadow Striker's hand moved to the gun at her waist.

“Yes,” said Esmeral firmly. “Accompany Jackpot on his mission.”

Shadow Striker and Acid Storm looked at each other in astonishment. Then he shrugged, sheathed his sword, and returned to his position along the aisle. 

Dread pooled in the depths of Jackpot's tanks. Shadow Striker finally closed her mouth and looked him up and down. She wasn't any happier to see him than he was to see her. She frowned and stood beside him, her gigantic kibble brushing against his shoulder. He stepped away.

Roadgrabber made a dark, amused sound. Jackpot took it as an ill omen. Shadow Striker glared at Roadgrabber. He stepped back and melted into the shadows.

“Yes, there you are. Together,” said Esmeral, in a dreamy way. “Gold and nearly gold.” Her uninjured wing fluttered. “Yes, _this_ will do.”

Shadow Striker reset her vocalizer and said, “boss, I don't understand. Acid Storm has the experti-”

“Ah, ah,” said Esmeral, shaking her finger. “You do not need to understand. Only to obey.”

“Yes, boss.” Shadow Striker frowned at Jackpot, as if all this were his fault. He frowned back and shrugged as if to say, _I didn't ask for this._

“Shadow Striker knows the details of your mission,” said Esmeral. “She will fill you in. But I'll give you the overview. You are to go down into the deepest tunnels, and then down into _their_ deepest tunnels, and retrieve the golden blood of Primus for me.”

Jackpot's processor stuttered. It was as if she had asked him to pluck Luna 1 from the sky and hand deliver it to her on a gold plate. He almost blanked out at the sheer absurdity of her statement. “But- but the blood of Primus is a _myth!_ A _joke_ between light runners!”

“All myths are built on truth,” said Esmeral. Her bestial eyes flickered towards the object in her ruined hand. “You will find it and you will bring back one vial.” She held up a finger. _“One_ vial. For me and me alone.”

“But-” Jackpot sputtered. The mission was utter nonsense. He glanced at the shadows where Roadgrabber had disappeared, desperately scanning his processor for a way to express his disbelief without getting himself killed. _How do you find something that isn't real?!_ “But- but what if we can't find it?”

“You _will_ find it,” said Esmeral. “You will not return until you do.”

“But!”

Esmeral's bestial eyes flashed. “You _are_ lucky, aren't you? Of all the mechs I could send down there, you will be the one to stumble upon it by chance.”

“But!”

Shadow Striker nudged him. “Shut _up,”_ she whispered. 

“But it's a _myth-”_

“Acid Storm,” said Esmeral. “Give Shadow Striker your map and the other files you had prepared.”

“Yes, boss.” Acid Storm concentrated for a moment, then pulled a card from the side of his helm. It was dark tech- a thin card embedded with coded data that only its receiver could decipher. If someone other than the designated receiver tried to access its data, their processor would be damaged. Depending on how vindictive the card-holder was, it could be anything from software orphaning to a full-on wipe. Either way, a card thief usually ended up dead afterwards.

Shadow Striker took the card and stuck it into her helm. Her eyes whitened for a moment, then cleared. “Card accessed successfully.”

“Go,” said Esmeral.

“Can I...” Shadow Striker tilted her arms so her kibble mimicked the body language of winged mechs. She looked down. _Submission._ “Can I see her, before I go? Can I say goodbye?”

“I don't think that will be necessary,” said Esmeral. “She's _perfectly_ safe where she is. And you'll be back soon. Right? It would only delay you.”

Shadow Striker's field flashed with anger. She glared at Jackpot. “Yes, boss.”

“Good. I look forward to your return.”

“But it's a myth-_augh!”_ Jackpot's protests were cut short as Shadow Striker grabbed his collar plating and yanked him to the side. “Hey, ow! Careful!” Jackpot dug his feet into the floor but she was stronger. “Are we gonna be able to fuel up before we go?!”

“Shut up,” said Shadow Striker.

A breathy laugh followed them as they went out.

~~

Jackpot drove behind Shadow Striker as she maneuvered the tunnels away from Esmeral's lair. He didn't like following a malform, but the slower-than-usual pace was better for his fuel efficiency. He glanced at the number at the top right of his vision. 93%.

After a few hours, Shadow Striker turned down a tunnel Jackpot had never traveled before. Its opening was marked by several X's in different colors. The X was a universal sign for “do not enter.” The orange and green X's denoted the different groups that couldn't go in. Jackpot hesitated.

“Uh, I'm green...”

“So?” Shadow Striker transformed. Or rather, turned inside-out and stood on two legs.

Jackpot followed suit, all of his vehicle mode folding away smoothly and efficiently. She didn't acknowledge the flourish he added to the end of his transformation. _“So,_ there's a big damn green X on there.” Jackpot tilted his head and pointed at his neck.

Shadow Striker's eyes flickered as she raised her runner's lenses. She glanced at him, then the tunnel entrance. “A painted X gonna stop you?”

“Well, no, but maybe there's something dangerous in there for my frame type, or some kinda family war Swindle has with someone, or something.” Jackpot shrugged. “I don't go where I'm not supposed to. That's part of how I've survived this business so long.”

“This is the way the map says to go,” said Shadow Striker. _“We go.”_ She tilted her helm so Jackpot could see her tattoos.

A pink wing and a silver knife. Esmeral's personal bodyguard. Guaranteed passage anywhere she pleased.

And with that, she strode down into the tunnel.

“Argh.” Jackpot eyed the green X and hurried after her.

The tunnel was wide enough to transform and drive through, but Shadow Striker remained in robot mode. She moved purposefully, glancing around as she went. 

Jackpot fell into place beside her. “Hey, uh, how long do you think this will take?”

Shadow Striker's eyes flashed different colors as lenses rose and fell over them. “I don't know. A few days, maybe? No one has ever survived this journey before. You could be dead in five minutes, who knows.”

“Hah. And what will Esmeral do if you return without me?”

Shadow Striker shrugged.

“Really? That's it?”

“I have no idea what she'll do! I had no idea she was gonna make _me_ go. She'd told Acid Storm _he_ was the one who would accompany you. We spent all morning getting him ready. He's got more experience in the deep tunnels.” Shadow Striker gripped the gun at her side. “I don't know _why_ she sprang that on me. I didn't even have time to restock. I didn't have time to- to-” She glared at Jackpot. “There's things I woulda done before we left, if I had known.”

“Yeah, me too.” _Like fill up my auxiliary tanks. Why the hell didn't I do that at Swindle's? Ugh, I'm such an idiot._ Jackpot rifled through his subspace compartments. Shadow Striker watched him carefully. _Why did I eat all my emergency rations and not replace them! Damn you, lazy past Jackpot! If this mission takes more than a day, I'm gonna starve._ To his utter dismay, his fuel percentage lowered by one. He glanced around. _88%?! What happened?! Why did it go down?_ Jackpot's spark flared against its chamber and his field flashed with pain. Shadow Striker stopped immediately.

“What was that!”

“N- nothing,” said Jackpot. He forced the thought of starvation down as deep as he could. Damn hungry spark! He'd have to be extra careful to act normal while his spark was doing... whatever the hell it was doing. He gave Shadow Striker a forced smile and a thumb's up. She narrowed her eyes. Jackpot floundered for a change of subject. He focused on what Shadow Striker had said. Esmeral had thrown her in alongside him at the last minute and she wasn't happy about it. “Esmeral said you'd give me the details of the mission.” He scowled. “Hmph. 'Mission.' How the hell does she expect us to mission a myth?”

“You tell me,” Shadow Striker said. “You're the good luck charm.”

“Pff. Being set up with distinct disadvantages like _Primus's blood doesn't exist_ doesn't help, you know. Does Esmeral usually do things like that? Set her underlings up for literal failure?”

Shadow Striker scowled. “No. Her _method_ of planning is bizarre, but the actual plans make sense. Usually. She's never changed the roster at the last minute before, though. But we won't fail.”

“How do you know?”

Shadow Striker turned to him. With each word she spoke, she bent closer and closer until they were nose-to-nose. “Because _I. Don't. Fail.”_ Jackpot could smell the fine oil in her engine. She tilted her head. “Got it?”

“Yeesh, yeah, I got it,” said Jackpot, pulling away from her. “What happened to Esmeral, anyway?” Jackpot raised his right arm over his head and twitched his fingers, emulating Esmeral's frozen stance.

“Pff.” Shadow Striker shook her head. “How long have you been in this business?”

“Feels like forever.”

“But you never heard that story?”

Jackpot grinned. “I hear lots of stories. Sometimes I start 'em myself. Tell me.”

Shadow Striker rolled her eyes. “You know the underground system is split between the three cities, right?”

“Yeah.” _87%?!_

“Three cities, three bosses.” She held up three fingers. “Esmeral of Uraya, Deathsaurus of Iacon and Camshaft of Praxus. Until two of 'em decided to gang up on the third. Esmeral and Deathsaurus were lovers and business partners. They wanted Praxus, so they took on Camshaft and killed him.” She curled one finger down. “They split Praxus down the middle, half to Esmeral here, half to Deathsaurus.”

“Huh. So _that's_ why so many of the tunnels under Praxus are twisty or dead ends. I thought the Praxians couldn't tell their tail pipes from their headlights.”

Shadow Striker smirked. “Deathsaurus wanted his half sealed off from Esmeral. His black diamonds did it all in one night.”

“Whoa.” _86%. What the hell?!_ “Is that why they hate each other?”

“Part of it.” Shadow Striker's thigh wheels spun. “Deathsaurus got greedy. They're all so goddamn greedy, you know?”

Jackpot thought of Swindle. “Yeah.”

“You get up high enough in the food chain and all you wanna do is eat. Deathsaurus was almost to the top. There was only one mech in his way.” Shadow Striker clenched a fist. “He headed an assault team against Esmeral, attacked our main chambers. It was a bitter fight. He clawed her mech eyes out, she pulled one of _his_ eyes out. He retreated, but just before he left, he hit her with fire and melted her to the wall.”

“Wow. Why doesn't she carve the wall apart? Free herself from immobility?”

“Because the eye she holds is not just an eye,” said Shadow Striker with an expression that made Jackpot uneasy. “It's a bomb. One wrong move and she'll blow herself to pieces. Probably the whole chamber. And you know what that could do.”

“By Primus,” said Jackpot softly. Mechs did everything in their power to avoid tunnel collapses. A collapse at the end of a tunnel weakened its entire length. A chamber as big as Esmeral's lair crashing down could trigger an entire system collapse. He thought of her twitching fingers. “No bomb removal experts in the business?”

“Oh, they've looked. They've evaluated her. The eyeball is loaded with parasitic circuitry. It dug into her hand, tapped into her own lines. It's woven into her body. If she moves too much, it'll blow. We're pretty sure it can't spy on us, but she can feel it. She says it's a different flavor pain from the pain of melted flesh.”

“Damn.” Jackpot was surprised at how talkative Shadow Striker was. She never looked at him, she kept sweeping the tunnels. Jackpot followed her methodical gaze. “Is that what this is all about? Primus's blood?”

“Yeah. If it's real. She got it in her processor that since no amount of anti-malware worked, she'd have to use something mystical. She says it'll heal the damage and remove the circuitry.”

“Gotcha... and I thought she wanted its healing properties to fix her arm and wing.”

“That would also be good.”

“How do you know all this?”

Her sure steps faltered the tiniest bit. Pain flashed across her eyes. “I was at the chamber battle,” Shadow Striker said. “I saw it all.”

“Oh.” Jackpot took careful note of Shadow Striker's reaction. “What did you see-”

She slapped her hand across his chest. He jolted to a stop. “Just how lucky _are_ you?”

“What the-” Jackpot looked down in astonishment at her hand. Her kibble had just missed him (-1%). “Don't touch me, malform!” Shadow Striker's eyes narrowed. “Uh.”

She leaned down and sneered. _“What_ was that?”

“Nothing,” said Jackpot. He shoved her hand off his chest, but she grabbed the smooth kibble on his back. “Hey!”

“Don't move, idiot,” Shadow Striker said. “Can't you see the fault lines?”

“What?”

Shadow Striker let him go and pointed to the ground. Jackpot squinted. He raised his runner's lens and a few others he'd gotten for free during the installation but had never used. The ground flickered through different colored filters, but looked unmarked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Her eyes flashed. “There's a fault line in the ground there. You stepped around all the others we passed, so I thought you could see them. But you almost stepped on that one!”

_Oh my god, that must be what was draining me. -1% for each crack._ Jackpot squatted down. He patted the ground, straining his optics in the natural yellow glow of the tunnels. Nothing but dust. “Where is it?”

Shadow Striker pointed. The tip of her finger parted and a red laser beam traced a line in the ground. Jackpot followed it.

“I think I can feel it,” he said. “But I can't see it.”

“You must not have the processor components to interpret the visual data correctly.” Shadow Striker shook her head. “Runner brat. And you call _me_ a malform.”

“That's probably why the green X was at the mouth of the tunnel! I _told you-”_

“Shut up.” Shadow Striker frowned. “If you can't see those fault lines and I can, there might be other things we encounter that _neither_ of us can sense.”

“Oh.” That never would have occurred to Jackpot. His visor dimmed as he imagined all the creatures from horror stories that mechs couldn't sense- invisible monsters and fieldless remnants, clawing their way down the tunnel. “Uhhhh-”

“Acid Rain had the latest data and software for the deep tunnels. That's why _he_ was supposed to accompany you.” The wheels in Shadow Striker's thighs spun slowly. “I'm going to install everything on the card he gave me.” Her eyes whitened. _“Don't move.”_

“You don't have to tell me twice,” said Jackpot. _I can't afford to miss any more of those fault lines. And I probably can't afford to **not** miss them, either._ He looked around the tunnel. No monsters. The tunnel was like all the others he'd spent half his life in: the gray metal of Cybertron roughly carved away, bathed in yellow light from the crystals growing from the sides and ceiling. The crystals glowed enough that when a mech turned their optics to the right setting, visual clarity was on par with aboveground. 

Mechs never lingered in the tunnels. Tunnels were always a place of movement. Go go go. Pull over when you have to. Don't touch the crystals... Jackpot glanced at Shadow Striker. She'd told him not to move... He resisted the urge to stand. A red dot still marked the fault line in front of him.

Her frame was still. Her eyes were white. 

It was a moment of vulnerability for Shadow Striker. She was inside herself, installing software and probably unaware of her surroundings. This might be the only chance he had to run the other way.

Jackpot thought of the fault lines he'd already missed. He'd have to hope he'd miss them again on his way out.

He thought of what Swindle might do to him after he found out he abandoned the mission. Or worse, what Esmeral might do.

As his fuel ticked down another percentage, he wondered what the golden blood of Primus might be able to do for _him_... if they found it.

Jackpot thought hard about his options. The fragile silence of the tunnel wormed its way into his processor. Tunnels always had a sound to them when you moved. The sound of driving and other mechs driving. Or flying. Whatever. And the crystals themselves rang with faint _tings._ All those little sounds bounced between the walls and echoed across the sensors as you moved. Mechs that used echolocation to maneuver, instead of visuals, always complained about having to carefully filter data while underground. One wrong move and you could careen into a crystal, and then _BOOM_. 

But this tunnel was silent. The only sound Jackpot heard was the faint rush of energon through his own lines- 

“Esmeral said you were lucky.”

The faint tinging of the crystals and sounds of others driving through distant tunnels came rushing back. Jackpot reset his visor. Shadow Striker was studying him, eyes pale as her processor worked through the card data. 

His window for fleeing had closed. 

“Yeah,” he said reluctantly. 

“Just _how_ lucky are you? How does it work?”

Jackpot took her addressing him as a sign he could move again. He brushed the dust from his hands and stood. He didn't want to tell her about his special ability. “I don't know how it works.” That much was true. 

She stared, the knife tattoo on her neck catching the light of the crystals. 

Jackpot pulled his nervous field in. “It just does. If I want to, I can hit the bullseye ninety-nine times out of a hundred. If someone comes up behind me swinging and I don't know it? I'll see a shanix on the ground and duck to pick it up at just the right time.”

“Hmm.” The wheels in her thighs spun again, but the other way. “Keep moving.” Shadow Striker splayed her hand and a rainbow of laser lights arched across the ground. “I'll highlight anything I see. Keep off the cracks.”

“Okay.” Jackpot tilted his helm. Her eyes were still pale. “Are you done? Cuz-”

“There's a lot on the card,” said Shadow Striker. “I've compartmentalized my processor. We keep moving.” Shadow Striker's pace fell just a tiny bit slower, until she was a short distance behind Jackpot. 

The tiny sounds of the tunnel died away again, and all Jackpot could hear was the energon in his lines. But he hardly noticed, because- 

Jackpot spun around and stopped her fist mid-punch with his palm. He grinned.

Her optical arches shot up. The crystals resumed their faint ringing. “It's true! It does work!”

“Nah,” said Jackpot, letting her fist go. “That wasn't luck. That's me knowing that every time I explain the luck to someone, they try to catch me off guard and punch me from behind. I know to watch for it.”

“Hmph.”

_Gotcha,_ thought Jackpot. 

Something poked at the back of his processor as he followed Shadow Striker through the tunnel. Processor pokes meant he was missing something. Jackpot was always conscientious of his intuition. It'd saved him numerous times. 

He relaxed his field a tiny bit and focused on his senses. The ringing of the yellow crystals got slightly louder. The ground below felt sturdy. The tunnel had the familiar scent of stale air and old energon. Shadow Striker's field was pulled in a professional amount, betraying only her concentration.

As he stepped over another fault outlined in red laser, it occurred to him. “Did you experience a data gap back there?”

Shadow Striker glanced at him, lenses flickering over her eyes. “What kind of data gap?”

“Auditory. The tunnel sounds went missing a couple times.”

A complex set of emotions passed through her field. Her mouth twisted. Then, after some consideration, she said, “no.”

_“No?”_

“No,” she repeated.

“I don't believe you,” said Jackpot. “You clearly know what I'm talking about.”

“I did not experience an auditory data gap,” said Shadow Striker. 

_Such careful wording,_ thought Jackpot. “Did you experience _any_ data gap?”

“No.”

Jackpot frowned. It was obvious she was hiding something. He went over her words methodically. It took another ten minutes of walking and a turn before he asked, “did you make _me_ experience a data gap?”

Another complex set of emotions passed through her field. Shadow Striker stopped. “I suppose I should be pleased,” she said darkly, “that you are so perceptive.” She angled her kibble like wing language, _irritation._ And then she just glared at him.

Ten seconds passed, withering in her glare.

“Aaannnd?” Jackpot prompted. “What the hell did you do?”

“I don't have to answer to you,” Shadow Striker said, tilting her head.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Jackpot. “I know what those tattoos mean. But all odds are against us in this game. And usually I'm up for that. I'm all over that. I'll wager my own aft against all odds because I know I'll win. _But,_ this game is an actual suicide mission being overseen by a mad mech melted to a wall.”

“And?”

“And so if you're fucking with my sensors, I'd really like to know that. And why.”

Shadow Striker's eyes flickered between lenses. Then, unexpectedly, she smiled. “Say that again.”

“If you're fucking with my sensors, I'd-” Jackpot started. Or, at least, had intended to start. No sound left his lips. He touched his throat. “What the hell!”

No sound.

Shadow Striker smirked.

Jackpot's processor launched a dozen scans. There was no measurable interference with any of his systems, no broken components between his speech mod and his vocalizer. His frame was operating correctly. The scans concluded the interference was coming from outside his body. And, as if to underscore that point, the sounds of the tunnels were gone again. All he could hear was the energon pounding through his lines.

Shadow Striker pointed to the silver engine on her chest. Some of its components were moving so fast, they blurred. Her mouth moved, but Jackpot couldn't hear her.

“Uh,” Jackpot didn't say.

The whirring parts in her engine stopped. The ringing of the crystals returned. “I can project a sound dampening cone into my immediate surroundings,” said Shadow Striker. “A cloak for audial data.”

“Oh.” Well. He hadn't expected that. “That's a handy thing to have.”

“Yes. Especially nice to use on mechs who talk too much.” 

“Like me?”

She nodded.

“Heh.”

They continued. Shadow Striker filled him in on the details of the mission- or rather, disappointed him with the lack thereof. Esmeral had sent four mechs before them and none had returned. The very last mech had transmitted a live feed of their journey, which Acid Storm had gathered and summarized. The mech's feed lost its visuals shortly before a spark-chilling scream, which Shadow Striker played aloud.

“And right after that, the feed cuts out for good,” said Shadow Striker.

“Great,” said Jackpot, as the scream faded. “Real good. Theatrical. Method acting.”

“Method _dying,”_ corrected Shadow Striker. 

“Right.” Jackpot suppressed a shudder. “Is that the kind of thing black diamond mechs listen to when they can't fall asleep?”

“Probably.” Shadow Striker tilted her head. “There are some maps generated using seismographic data. But they're largely theoretical. After a certain point, no one knows what's down there.”

“So how do _we_ know where to go?”

“Acid Storm had a guess,” she said. “A location that he thought had a high probability of being what... what we're looking for. We are to go to that location.”

“And what are we looking for? Exactly?”

“The stories say it is a pool of golden energon hidden away in a secret cave. Primus left it there as a parting gift before continuing on to the stars.”

“Oh. That sounds better than what I thought.”

“What did you think?”

Jackpot patted his subspace compartment. “Light runner tales say Primus sleeps deep below ground. I thought I was supposed to stab him with a needle. And then run like hell away just in case he woke up. Dipping a vial into a pool sounds much nicer.”

She smirked.

The tunnels changed as they walked. There was a definite downward slope and the walls had a wet sheen to them. The crystals tinged a little louder, though Jackpot wasn't sure if that was because they really were louder, or because their sound stood out between his and Shadow Striker's footfalls.

Walking beside her, minding all the invisible things she outlined with her lasers, was annoying as hell. He wondered if the malform was putting in fake obstacles just to watch him dance and twist around them.

After another hour, the tunnels were narrower and noticeably warmer. The crystals growing from the walls were smaller. Slime bubbled at their bases and oozed downwards.

“Yuck. Why are the deep tunnels slimy?” asked Jackpot. He avoided the grooves cut into the ground. They channeled the slime away from the middle of the path.

“I don't know. Far fewer fault lines here, though,” said Shadow Striker.

“Yeah. All the cracks are probably full of slime.” 

“Hmm.” Her eyes flickered with lenses. She squinted. 

Jackpot followed her gaze. Up ahead, the soft yellow light solidified instead of fading away into darkness, as all the previous tunnels had with distance. 

“Is this tunnel supposed to end?” asked Jackpot.

“No,” said Shadow Striker. “According to the maps, we continue forward.”

“Uh,” said Jackpot, as they came to the end of the tunnel. “Tell Acid Storm his map sucks.”

Shadow Striker folded her arms. “I will.”

Jackpot and Shadow Striker stepped carefully in the middle of the pathway, where the ground was highest. Sheets of metal were hammered across the tunnel ahead, damming the flow of slime. It coursed around their feet. 

Someone had spray painted X's of every color onto the metal barricade. Jackpot's tanks turned.

_Every_ color.

He pointed to the black X. “That's the most ominous thing I've ever seen in my entire life.”

“Hmm...” Shadow Striker eyed that black X. And the pink one above it. “At least we know no one will bother us.” She reached out and grabbed one of the sheets of metal.

“Hey, wait.” Jackpot went to stop her, then thought better of it. His hand hovered awkwardly above hers. “I don't think anyone will blame us for turning back. Even black diamond mechs don't go through there. Even _you_ aren't supposed to go through there.”

She stared at him impassively, the wheels in her thighs slowly rotating.

Jackpot pointed to the slime. “I'll put some of that in a vial. We'll give it to Esmeral. We'll tell her that's what we found.”

“A sparkling could tell that's not energon,” said Shadow Striker. She flicked up her runner's lenses. “It doesn't even register on the gamut.”

“Yeah, but-” Jackpot checked his fuel level. 79%. His spark pounded against the walls of its chamber. His lines felt like they were filled with knives instead of energon. These were his instincts screaming at him. “I think if we go through there, we'll die,” said Jackpot. “I'd really like to not go through there.”

Shadow Striker scoffed. “What are you afraid of?”

“I don't know! Whatever got the other four mechs that went down there!”

“I'm not afraid of anything.” Shadow Striker pulled the sheet back. Colorful X's curled around one another. With a metallic shriek, the barricade came crashing down. Slime splashed across their legs.

“Ugh!” Jackpot squirmed. He had chosen to be hit with it, rather than jump out of the way just in time. He wanted to keep his fuel levels up as high as he could. “At least now we know the slime doesn't explode with impact.”

“I already knew that,” said Shadow Striker. “Go.” She pushed him through the jagged hole into the tunnel beyond.

~~


	2. The Price

_slosh slosh_

Jackpot grimaced inwardly. The slime was unavoidable, pooling as deep as his knees in places. Even though the tunnel sometimes forked to drier paths, Shadow Striker sloshed ahead.

“Why aren't we going _that_ way?” asked Jackpot, pointing to a dry path running parallel to theirs.

“There are no faults here,” she said. She held up her hand. She had stopped shining her laser guides an hour ago. “Less of a pain for me. Less dangerous for you.”

“Ugh.” Jackpot's shins twitched, expelling slime from the crevasses of his plating. In vain. They filled faster than he could dry his leg components. “It's so _gross.”_

“But harmless.”

“But gross. Super gross.” Admitting to being grossed out wasn't the kind of thing Jackpot would say to Bluestreak. And normally he wouldn't say it to anyone above him. But he didn't care if Shadow Striker thought he was easily-disgusted. There was no way around it. They were literally wading through the stuff. The only enjoyment he'd gotten out of their trek so far had been whining about it. It was freeing, in a way. It didn't matter what he said. She was unlikely to think any less of him than she already did. And he didn't care what she thought, because she was a malform. 

He wondered if a personal bodyguard to Esmeral would admit to being disgusted by tunnel slime. “Don't _you_ think it's gross?”

“Hmph.” She raised a leg. Slime slopped out of her foot. “I've stepped through worse.”

“Yeah, I'll bet,” said Jackpot. _Not an admission,_ he noted. “What do you have to do to become one of Esmeral's bodyguards?”

Shadow Striker looked at him curiously. After a moment, she said, “the path is different for each guard. But the basic requirement is complete loyalty to Esmeral.”

“Do you have to kill a black diamond mech?”

She laughed to herself. “Only if it works for Deathsaurus.”

“We always heard you gotta kill a black diamond mech. Barehanded.”

Shadow Striker shrugged. 

“Could you do that?”

She grinned at him. It wasn't a very nice grin. “I wouldn't have to. They answer to me.”

“But _could_ you-”

“I could just tell it to kill itself.”

“Oh.” Jackpot's tanks churned.

“But in the event it did not follow orders...” Shadow Striker clenched her fist.

Jackpot recalled Roadgrabber slinking into the shadows after she had glared at him. “I see.”

“It would be a loss of resources, though. I would have to explain to Esmeral why I wasted one of her black diamonds.” Shadow Striker's thigh wheels spun, accompanied by a light amusement in her field. “They're single minded but competent. It's been ages since Esmeral had one of them slaughtered. Any more questions?”

Despite himself, Jackpot brightened. “Yes, actually.”

Shadow Striker groaned.

“Is Acid Storm single?”

Shadow Striker's eyes widened. She stared at him incredulously. Her kibble twitched.

Jackpot couldn't tell if she was going to shoot him or punch him. _Jackpot, you idiot!_ he thought. _Why can't you keep your goddamn mouth shut!_

Shadow Striker burst out laughing. Her arm kibble barely missed a crystal as she felt for the wall. “Are you fucking kidding me!” She leaned against it, her laughter echoing through the tunnel.

“Uh, heh.” Jackpot kicked at the slime, energon rising through his lines and warming his face.

After a few minutes, she composed herself. “Ahaha. Haaaaaaaa.” She smacked his helm. “You're a fucking treat. That almost made up for how annoying you are.”

“Uh... thanks.”

“Heh. Heh heh.” Shadow Striker laughed to herself as she sloshed forward again. 

“You, uh.” Jackpot hurried to catch up. “You didn't answer the question.”

“You were _serious?”_ Shadow Striker looked at him, lenses sliding over her eyes. He nodded. She snorted. “He killed his last three lovers in bed. Frag and feast. Drinks their innermost energon once he's done with 'em. You still interested?”

Jackpot's panels clenched together. He shook his head vehemently. 

“Good.” She paused. “Guess you really _are_ lucky! Lucky _I_ got assigned to you. You were gonna woo him down here, weren't you?”

“Uh...” Jackpot was caught off guard. Shadow Striker had seen right through him. For the first time, he considered that she might be a lot smarter than her frame made her look. No use lying about his intentions. “Yeah.”

She shook her head. “The shinier the plating, the duller the processor.”

Jackpot glanced at her matte paint job. “Yeah...”

“Dumbaft runners,” Shadow Striker said. “C'mon. It's less slimy ahead. Supposedly.” She tilted her helm, studying her internal maps. “Stupid Acid Storm. Of course he didn't mark the ground as submerged. Stupid flier.” She muttered to herself, leading the way.

Jackpot followed, trying not to imagine Acid Storm's claws in his spark chamber.

~~

71%

Jackpot sighed. The last few miles of winding tunnel had bored him out of his processor. He'd asked Shadow Striker questions here and there, but didn't want to annoy her too much. He didn't want to give her any reason to shove him into a crystal. She'd been much, for lack of a better word, _friendlier_ than he had expected. But it was a scary kind of friendly. The kind of friendly that came from a mech who was perfectly at ease, because the continued well-being of everyone around her was entirely dependent on her whims.

“Huh!”

That wasn't a sound Shadow Striker had made before.

“Ooo...”

And neither was _that_. Jackpot peered around her kibble. “What? What happened?”

Shadow Striker pointed to the wall. “There's a vein of rust here.” Blue forked across the wall like lightning, shining in places. The slime ran around it, seeming to avoid it.

Jackpot scanned the vein with his rudimentary geological software. He had the basic tier- it identified the common, dangerous minerals found in the tunnels, which was the only use a runner had for it. 

His scan came up inconclusive. Not surprising. The software had been free.

“I, uh, I dunno what it is,” he said. “But it's not dangerous. I think.”

“No, of course it isn't.” Shadow Striker scraped her finger along the wall, dislodging a chunk of rust. She smiled at it and tucked it away into her subspace compartment.

“What's that for?” asked Jackpot.

She ignored his question. “The vein indicates we're coming up to a different geological area. According to the map, there's some kind of...” She tilted her helm. “...big empty... anomaly ahead. The seismographic data is... confusing.”

Jackpot gestured to the slimy walls. “Something different than miles of _this?_ Lead the way. Please! I can't take any more of the slime. And the soft, yellow light. My spark chamber for a neon bulb!”

Shadow Striker made an amused noise. 

They continued. The tunnel slowly widened. The air grew cooler. They shook the slime from their feet and silently praised the dry path.

“Oh...” said Shadow Striker. “C'mon!” She ran ahead. The tunnel surged upwards. A gust of cool wind flowed down and around them.

Jackpot followed. The rushing wind evened out and they popped up into an enormous cavern.

“Wowwww...” Jackpot spun around, gratified to see Shadow Striker grinning, as well.

They were on a shelf of sorts, studded with huge stalagmites and crystals, and connected to the ceiling with soaring columns. Air rushed between the columns, cooling their plating. The cavernous ceiling was lined with rows of crystals like yellow teeth. One side of the shelf connected to the wall, which was a vertical maze of carved out tunnels and columns and shadowed shelters. The other side dropped off abruptly. Jackpot ran to the edge. It was a cliff. Below was a forest of yellow crystals, glinting menacingly in their own light.

Jackpot backed away from the edge. Shadow Striker walked to him, the lenses on her eyes flashing up and down. “What's down there?” she asked.

“Yellow crystals.”

She peered over the edge. “Hmm.” 

“Yeah, I think I'll just,” Jackpot took a huge step away from the edge, “walk over here.”

Shadow Striker nodded.

They both surveyed the wall of tunnels and hidden places. It was as if Primus had placed a thousand doorways at different heights and decorated them with archways and crystals.

“Think there's a cave of golden blood somewhere in there?” asked Jackpot.

She squinted. “Could be. But the map says to go farther.”

“There's a lot of hidden spots,” said Jackpot.

“Yeah.”

“I hope the map is right.”

She nodded. “Let's go.”

Shadow Striker lead them on a winding path between columns. They were forced to scale and climb the stalagmites where they overlapped. And, of course, avoid the crystals. They were huge, taller than Shadow Striker, without a speck of slime. Jackpot found it all much more exciting than the tunnels, which felt claustrophobic in hindsight.

“No fault lines?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Everything here is stable.” 

Shadow Striker paused a few times to scrape rust of assorted colors from the columns.

“Do you collect that stuff?” asked Jackpot.

She tucked a chunk of rust away carefully. “I'm collecting it for someone else.”

“Oh.” Jackpot bent to pick up a colorful chunk of stalagmite. “Would that someone else like a-”

-3% 

Jackpot's spark tensed in his chest.

“Like what?” Shadow Striker asked.

“Shh,” he whispered. He squatted down. _66%! A sudden loss of 3%! What happened?!_

Shadow Striker got down in a defensive stance, eyes fierce, flickering with lenses. After a moment, she flared her field at him and tilted her head questioningly.

Jackpot signaled for her to wait. He looked up at the wall of tunnels and openings. Nothing moved in the shadows.

After another moment, he shuffled forward, as quietly as he could, until he was right next to her. “Something didn't see me, just now,” Jackpot whispered.

“What?” she whispered. “How do you know?”

“I don't- I don't know how to explain it. But I got lucky, just now, by _not_ attracting something's attention. When I ducked down to pick up this rock.”

She gave him a look.

“I know,” he said, even softer than before. “I know it's weird, but-”

-3% 

His eyes widened.

Shadow Striker looked behind her, thinking he had seen something there. Nothing. When she turned back, her field was tinged with anger. “What is it??” she hissed.

“I don't know,” mouthed Jackpot. “Please, be quiet. It didn't see us again. But it might see us next time.”

_“What_ will see us?”

“I don't know!” he mouthed, throwing his hands out in exasperation. “But it's looking for us!”

Shadow Striker gave him the most annoyed look he'd ever received in his life. “You're worse than useless!” she whispered.

A blur of rusted metal smashed into her, throwing her sideways.

“Shadow Striker!” Jackpot shot up to his feet. The smell of rotten energon hit his nose. “Ugh!”

Shadow Striker and the thing slammed into a column with a _crack._ Jackpot winced, unsure who had been injured. 

Shadow Striker snarled and sprang upwards, positioning her huge kibble in front of her like a shield. She swore at the thing, a long string of profanity that would have had Jackpot guffawing under any other circumstances.

The thing rolled and righted itself. It stood on two legs. Shadow Striker reached for her gun. “Is that a fucking remnant?!”

Jackpot backed into a column. -1%. He had narrowly missed backing up into a giant crystal. “Fuck,” he whispered. Then- “fuck! I think it is!”

The thing reared back. It was unmistakably a mech- or once had been. It had tank treads at its shins and shoulders. Half its helm was missing. Its eyes glowed a sickly yellow from the shadows. Rust scored its plating, and where the metal cracked open, yellow light shone through. It made a disgusting sound- the sound of a mech whose inner workings and vents were clogged with clots of rotten blood. Its spark chamber had been clawed open. It was dark. There was no spark inside.

A reanimated mech. A mindless, sparkless shell that craved only living energon. A fieldless horror from sparkling's tales.

It was a big one, too. It made its sickly sound and shifted unevenly from foot to foot. One of its thighs was cracked. It stepped forward, its leg bending at an angle that made Jackpot queasy.

Shadow Striker placed her gun on top of her makeshift shield, aimed-

The remnant roared with a splintered throat and launched itself at Jackpot.

“AHHH!!!” Jackpot screamed and ran. The thing followed, swiping at him with rusty claws. Jackpot's processor raced as he tried to navigate the cavern, his fuel gauge ticking down as he avoided both crystals and claws-

_avoid column!_

_swerve right!_

The thing swiped again. Rotten energon spattered against the back of Jackpot's helm.

-1% 

_fuck fuck FUCK_

_crystal! Ahh run!_

-1% 

_FUCK!_

Jackpot screamed and ducked through an archway, expecting his fuel gauge to drop, as surely there would fortuitously be a way out on the other side-

but it ended at-

a giant yellow crystal-

“AHH!”

Jackpot spun around and ducked just as the remnant slashed at the air (-1%). As he breathed hard, cursing his past self for never packing a gun, even though there were perfectly fine and rational reasons for a runner to never carry a gun, he stared up at the rusty, rotten treads of the remnant, all thoughts fleeting, his tanks threatening to empty, his spark burning the sides of its chamber-

Bluestreak's doorwings fluttered through his mind-

and then he was looking between the broken treads, down the barrel of Shadow Striker's gun, and her finger was squeezing the trigger-

“Wait!” yelled Jackpot. “There's a crystal right behind me! Don't shoot!”

Her finger bent-

Jackpot threw his arms over his head, wondering which part of the Well he would end up in, surely he hadn't been a bad mech all his life-

But instead of an explosion, he heard a disgusting, wet _sshhppllt_ and then rusty metal collapsing into itself. 

Jackpot peeked out between his arms. The remnant was on the ground, writhing, shuddering, _melting_.

“Get up!” hissed Shadow Striker.

Jackpot threw himself to his feet. He looked at the remnant. He looked back at the giant crystal. He looked at Shadow Striker.

“You're welc-” she started.

“What are you, fucking crazy?!” he screamed. Jackpot waved his arms at the giant crystal. “I was right in front of this thing! You almost fucking blew up the entire fucking cavern!!”

“Pff.” Shadow Striker holstered her gun. “It's-”

_“What the fuck!!”_

“Shut up!” Shadow Striker stomped on the remnant's broken helm. It exploded under her foot. The thing's limbs stopped writhing. The yellow light inside it died. 

Jackpot gaped at her.

“It's not a percussive weapon! What do you take me for?!” Shadow Striker kicked the remnant's treads. They poofed into dust. “It's an acid gun! Even if it hit the crystals, it wouldn't set them off! It's formulated for tunnel use!”

“Well!” Jackpot tried to steady his shaking legs. His processor whirled, trying to wrap itself around the fact that he was still alive. “Well, that's really great! I'm glad!” 

“Stop yelling,” said Shadow Striker. “You'll attract more of them.”

To Jackpot's utter surprise, she held out her hand. He took it. She yanked him over the remnant's smoldering body. 

“Now shut up,” she said between her teeth. She shook his shoulder. “Pull yourself together.” Her eyes flashed with lenses. “I've made a note of this thing's energy signature. If there are any more, hopefully we'll have more of a warning.”

“G- great.” Jackpot steadied his breathing. “That's really good. My warning system is not very specific.”

“Yeah, I noticed. You gonna let go of me now?”

Sheepishly, Jackpot let go of her hand. 

She shook her head at him and continued on. “At least we're going the right way.” 

“How do you know?”

Shadow Striker glanced back at the remnant. “I knew him.”

Jackpot swallowed. “Oh.”

~~

Shadow Striker scanned the wall of the cavern. “I want to be up there,” she said, pointing. “I don't wanna travel down here. That thing probably had a hiding spot with visual advantage.”

Jackpot nodded. “What if we travel with your noise cloak on?”

She shook her head. “It's not meant for sustained usage. And I'm not so sure that thing heard us. I think it used other senses. But I'll employ it when we turn suspicious corners.”

“Okay.”

Jackpot thought wistfully back to the grungy backstage area of the light club. That was more his style. He much preferred light running to... exploring, or spelunking, or whatever the hell this was.

There was a reason he stuck to shadows and used a tool that came with a built-in sedative. 

He wasn't exactly the bravest mech under the world.

“I don't see a clear way up,” said Shadow Striker. She pursed her lips. “But there's a bit of distance between the wall and the cliff edge. We'll be in full sight if we travel by the edge, but we'll have the advantage of knowing when they come for us. They won't be able to hide behind the columns and ambush. They'll have to cross that distance first.”

“Unless they can disappear,” said Jackpot, thinking of Mesmer.

Shadow Striker blinked. “Normally I'd say that's nonsense. But we're in uncharted territory. Hmm...” She looked around the cavern again. “Too bad you're not a flier.”

“Too bad _you're_ not a triple changer,” said Jackpot. 

Shadow Striker narrowed her eyes. “One of the mechs that was sent down here was. We might run into him.”

“Oh, great.” Jackpot glanced at his fuel gauge. 59%. “I don't know if I can take too much more excitement.”

Shadow Striker shrugged. “Keep that luck flowing.” She headed towards the cliff edge.

“Yeah,” said Jackpot. _I would, if I had any control over it._

They walked along the edge. Not _too_ close, but not far enough for Jackpot's liking. Energon was screaming through his lines. His spark swelled against its chamber. He breathed more quickly, trying to cool off from the pain of it. Shadow Striker glanced at him but didn't say anything.

The cavern was quieter than the tunnels, surprisingly. There was no gross, soft squelching of slime. No far-off echo of other mechs. There was an occasional drip, whose origins Jackpot could not divine. There were their footsteps, which they tried to silence, and the energon in his lines.

“The crystals here don't ring,” he said softly.

“Hmm. I hadn't noticed. But you're right.” Shadow Striker put her hand to her gun. “Another one. Trailing us from the columns. You'll see it when it charges. Keep walking for now.”

Jackpot tensed. “Okay,” he whispered. He looked along the line of columns and stalagmites. 

“Do you have any weapons?”

“Just a knife. And my needles.”

“Useless.”

“Runners aren't supposed to be armed!” Jackpot whispered testily. “You either get biolight with your skills or you get nothing at all.” 

“That's stupid,” whispered Shadow Striker.

“Your boss is the one who made the rules! Runners aren't supposed to kill anyone. Dead mechs can't be needled more than once.”

“Hrm.”

A strangled, clicking sound passed through their audials. Jackpot froze. Shadow Striker turned slowly. The stench of rotten energon wafted through the air.

“It's coming,” she said softly. She pulled her gun from her side. “There it is. I'll fire once it's in range.”

Jackpot stuffed his field in. He scanned the edge of the columns and crystals.

_There._

A rusty minicon peered at them from around a stalagmite. It had a drill on its back, which had been ripped in half vertically: strands of wire cascaded out from its open edge. Its eyes were two burning yellow flames in the shadow of its helm. Its chest was clawed open, spark chamber dark.

“Drill Bit,” whispered Shadow Striker. “Aww. You were one of the good ones.”

Drill Bit, or its reanimated remains, shot out from behind the stalagmite. It snarled, a choking, bubbly sound, its half drill spinning and flinging coagulated, rotten energon everywhere.

Jackpot bent his knees, ready to run. “C'mon,” he said. “Shoot it!”

“I will,” said Shadow Striker. “It's not a long range weapon.”

Drill Bit neared, shedding rust and red ooze. Shadow Striker raised the gun. Just as the stench of rot threatened to overwhelm them, she fired.

_Shhplllt!_

A clear liquid sprayed from the gun and hit Drill Bit with a sizzle. The remnant's plating hissed. Its own momentum carried it forward as it collapsed, halving itself. It writhed and shuddered on the ground. Shadow Striker watched it a moment, then strode forward to stomp its head.

-1%

“What the hell?” Jackpot looked around indignantly. “Really?!” he shouted at his own fuel gauge. “But she took care of it!”

“Who are you talking to?” asked Shadow Striker.

Jackpot noticed a splotch of black on the ground next to him. He had narrowly avoided being struck. But it didn't look like anything that had come from Drill Bit. Confused, he looked around.

He looked up.

“That was a distraction!” he shouted.

A huge plane mech, or, the rusty remains of one, was plummeting towards him, yellow energon trailing from its engines. It engaged its weaponry, but didn't shoot. Instead, chunks of its plating rained down.

Jackpot covered his head and jumped, avoiding the pieces. “Shoot it! Shoot it!”

“I can't shoot upwards!” said Shadow Striker. “The acid will come back down on us!”

“That's a very big design flaw!” Lacking any other idea, Jackpot made a beeline for her. They ran together along the cliffside.

“I have to wait until it lands!” said Shadow Striker. Her outstretched arm swung wildly as she ran, her kibble throwing off her balance. “I can't aim while running!”

“It's gonna land on _us!”_

The remnant clearly had the advantage. More and more of its plating broke off, slamming into the ground around them.

“Dammit!” Shadow Striker grabbed Jackpot and yanked him close. She crouched, holding her other arm over them, shielding them.

“Thanks!” Jackpot breathed heavily. His fuel gauge hadn't gone down any further. Shadow Striker was taking all the hits. She winced as debris slammed into her kibble. “How long can you keep that up?”

“Long enough,” she said. She glanced through her own windshield. 

“Wow, that malform kibble really comes in handy!”

Shadow Striker glared at him. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?!”

Jackpot snapped his mouth shut.

“I should thrash y-”

The remnant smashed down into them. Shadow Striker and Jackpot thudded into the ground. Jackpot's vision went white. The gun went off. There was a strangled scream. It didn't sound like Shadow Striker. 

Jackpot reset his visor over and over until his vision cleared. His HUD pinged with proximity alerts. He threw himself to the side.

A tank roared by.

_A tank?! Well, shit. This must be the triple changer._

As Jackpot pushed himself to his feet, he saw Shadow Striker's gun. She had dropped it. He dove for it just as the tank went over the edge of the cliff, transformed, and flew back. “Here!” He heaved the gun at her.

Shadow Striker sprang up and snatched the gun out of the air. “Move!”

Jackpot transformed and screeched away from the cliff edge. His tires burned as he swerved, avoiding columns and crystals.

Shadow Striker held the gun up to her eye and shot. The triple changer remnant dodged. “Shit!” She twisted away from it as it flew by. Chunks of plating pelted her and she crouched beneath her shield.

_I gotta do something,_ thought Jackpot. The faintest semblance of a plan came to him. Jackpot raced away from her. “Hey!” he screamed. He transformed and waved his arms. “Hey! Ugly! Over here!”

The remnant swooped around.

“AHH! Shoot it shoot it shoot it!” Jackpot took off in a run. He looked back to see Shadow Striker push herself up off the ground. She aimed the gun. And waited. “Shoot it!”

She shook her head.

_Augh! I'm too far away!_ Jackpot ran for a column, swung around it, and launched himself back the way he had come. He looked up, expecting the remnant to slam into the column. 

No such luck. It easily maneuvered around and followed him.

“AHH!”

Well, that was as far as Jackpot's processor had planned. He ran straight for Shadow Striker again.

“Zig zag, you idiot!” Shadow Striker aimed the gun at him.

In that moment, Jackpot understood two things.

One, if Shadow Striker shot at the remnant, which was above him, the acid would rain down on him.

Two, the remnant was faster than he was.

It slammed into him from behind. Jackpot was lifted onto its rotting back. He scrabbled at it and caught the bracing of one of its wings. The rusted plating broke apart beneath his fingers. Liquid black rust spurted from the hole. The remnant howled. It spun to dislodge him, faster and faster. Jackpot frantically recalibrated his gyros, screams trapped in his throat. He lost his grip and was whipped into the air.

_Shpplt!_

The stinking mess beneath him melted. Jackpot flailed. Shadow Striker's eyes widened. Jackpot nudged his body, aiming for her, then realized any direction he nudged himself in would have the same result- he was going too fast. He was headed over the edge of the cliff. Jackpot stretched his arms out as he sailed past Shadow Striker. She jumped and caught him, but his momentum was too strong. They spun, he fell out of her arms, Jackpot lost all sense of orientation, and the next thing he knew, he was clinging to her leg on the side of the cliff.

“Let go!” she shouted.

Jackpot made the mistake of looking down. Three stories below his feet was a thicket of gigantic yellow crystals, jagged and glistening in their own light. “I can't! Pull us up!”

Shadow Striker gripped the side of the cliff with one hand. She reached for the cliff with her other arm, but her shield-like kibble had been bent in the way. “Augh!” She swung her leg. Jackpot bumped against the cliff.

“Hey!”

“I can't get footing on the cliffside! Let go or we'll both fall!”

“But I don't wanna die!”

Shadow Striker kicked at his hand. “Mechs as annoying as you _never_ die!”

“Hey! That's- ow! _Ow!_ Stop it!”

With a final swing of her leg, Shadow Striker knocked him loose.

_ **“Aaaaahhhhhh!”** _

There was a crunching sound.

Shadow Striker rolled her eyes, dug her feet into the cliffside, and heaved herself up. She thoroughly stomped the triple changer remnant's cockpit, retrieved her gun, and holstered it. 

She knelt carefully at the cliff edge and called down. “Well?!”

After a pause, an indignant, “I'm not dead!”

“Told you.”

“No thanks to you!”

“Use your processor,” Shadow Striker shouted down to him. “Of _course_ you had to be the one to fall. Did you happen to land in the _one_ empty space between all the giant crystals?”

Jackpot glanced around. To his annoyance, he found she was right. He had landed, limbs akimbo, like a puzzle piece perfectly slotted between the crystals. _“Maybe!”_

“And do you think _I_ could've landed that?”

Jackpot gingerly pulled his limbs in. If she had fallen, her upper arm kibble would've struck the crystals for sure. “No. Definitely not.”

“Yeah. So, what's the problem? Luck wasn't gonna help me with that. But it helped you. This way, we're _both_ alive.”

Jackpot scowled. “It comes with a price!”

“Really?” The tone was genuine interest, not sarcasm. 

Jackpot missed it though, assessing his frame. The impact had shuddered through his systems and they were auto-resetting. The shocks in his legs were badly crunched. Blood seeped from his knees. His golden paint was scuffed and scratched. Jackpot slowly shifted his weight from foot to foot, waiting for his fuel gauge readout to pop up again. When it finally did, dread ran through his spark.

16%

“Y- yeah,” he croaked out. He reset his vocalizer. “Yeah. The less likely the outcome, the heavier the price. This one was... pretty hefty.” What had it been before the fall? Something like 58%? Shit. That was one of the biggest losses he'd ever taken. 

Jackpot stepped painfully away from the crystals. He knew he'd been _really_ lucky to have missed them all. He could feel it in his spark, which was burning the sides of its chamber.

He could see why Shadow Striker had done what she did. 

Not that he felt inclined to forgive her for it.

“Are you badly damaged?” she called.

“Kind of.”

“Can you transform?”

“I don't know. Probably not a good idea with the crystals all around.” Jackpot groaned as he tilted his whole body back to look up the cliff. Shadow Striker was kneeling, three stories above him. The vertical wall was unscalable, smooth and slippery with dust and slime. The only craggy bits he could've used to climb were stuffed full of yellow crystals. “How the hell am I supposed to get back up there?”

“I dunno. What do you see?”

Jackpot peered around, his runner's lens shifting up and down, scanning for any markings or guides or anything at all. It was giant crystals as far as he could see. “Sparkly, yellow death.”

Shadow Striker made a disappointed sound. “Is there a path?”

“No.” Jackpot scooted around a crystal. They grew just far apart enough for him to squeak by. “But I think I can make my way in any particular direction, if I'm careful.”

“Good.” Shadow Striker stood. “I'll continue along the cliffside. Keep me in sight. We'll move in parallel. Perhaps the terrain will level off.”

“Okay.”

For the better part of an hour, Jackpot slowly and painfully made his way between the crystals. Twice, Shadow Striker left the cliffside to fight off remnants. The second time she took so long that Jackpot thought she'd been killed. He watched his fuel gauge go down percent by percent, the fear of death surging through his plating. He cursed Swindle, and Esmeral, and this whole stupid, impossible myth-mission.

And then it all became clear.

The real reason Esmeral had sent them down there.

Shadow Striker's kibble appeared overhead and she shouted triumphantly for him to move his aft. Jackpot pushed himself forward, frowning at his thoughts. They were depressing and realistic, his least favorite type of thought.

Finally, Shadow Striker called down, “there's a broken column up ahead. It's got cracks in it like steps. Come up.”

Jackpot's neck was stiff. His torso creaked as he looked. There it was, up ahead. His breathing came faster as he tried to vent the rising heat in his body. “I see it,” he said.

“Move.”

10%

The crystals lost their yellow color as Jackpot's processor redistributed its resources. Non-critical functions began to power down. Jackpot crawled halfway up the column before Shadow Striker lost her patience and stomped down. She grabbed him and hefted him over her shoulders. “Damn! Why are you so hot?”

“Injury,” said Jackpot. It was all he could muster.

She lugged him up the column and set him down on the cliffside. “Let's go,” she said. “I don't think there are any more remnants here. I did a sweep. All four of Esmeral's mechs are dead. But the last remnant wasn't a mech. It was a... beast thing. There may be more of them.”

Jackpot wasn't listening.

7% 

_Damn._

Heat rose from his joints. The cavern shimmered around him. It was the creeping heat of starvation. When a mech ran out of energon and cycled on fumes, their frame temperature rose until there was nothing left to burn. It rose and rose until all the delicate circuitry fried. Then the processor melted and was cut off from the spark, and the mech died.

Jackpot glanced at Shadow Striker. Her field wasn't tucked in well; he felt the ragged edges of anger and pain pulsing through her. Her kibble was bent and broken. She probably couldn't transform.

She really wasn't going to be happy about this.

But what else could he do?

“Hey,” he said, and stopped.

She looked back at him. “What?”

“I, uh.” Jackpot thought of how best to illustrate the issue. It's not like he could patch her into his systems directly. He semi-transformed his forearm open. “I don't know how to tell you this. And I don't think you'll be happy. But I... I don't burn efficiently. And I'm almost out.”

Her eyes widened with surprise. “You're _low?!”_

“Lower than low.” He turned his arm so she could see how dim his lines were. “Kinda hitting critical levels here.”

“You didn't fill up before we left?!”

“I did! My main tank. I filled it. I have a couple little tanks for emergencies, but I didn't... think to fill those. Like I said, I don't burn efficiently. The luck has a price. All the little things, the cracks I stepped over without realizing... the warnings for the remnant... surviving that fall... they all had a price.”

Her eyes widened even further. “It costs _energon_ to be lucky?”

“Yeah.”

Shadow Striker shook her head. She looked around the cavern. “It's not like there's a shop here. What do you want _me_ to do about it?”

“Can you uh...” Jackpot swallowed his pride. It was bitter. “...spare some fuel?”

“Are you serious?” 

“Yes.”

“You want blood from a _malform?”_ She mimicked his voice with an unflattering screech.

Jackpot looked down. “I'm sorry.”

“You're only sorry now that you need help!”

Jackpot winced.

“The answer is no. Besides,” Shadow Striker blinked and pointed to her eyes. “I can see what's running through you. My type isn't the same as anything you've got. You'll have a reaction! That's _worse_ than starving to death.”

“For normal mechs, yeah,” said Jackpot. “But I've had so many transfusions I've got a tolerance for every type.” He unsubtly pulled back a torso panel to reveal his emergency fuel line intake. “Don't look away. This stopped being embarrassing years ago.”

Shadow Striker twisted her mouth in distaste. She put a hand on her hip. “And what do _I_ get out of this?”

“A partner who's not dead.” Jackpot reset his visor. His processor was filling his HUD with red and yellow alerts. 

“Eh.”

6%

Fear welled up in his spark. He scrambled for something that would move Shadow Striker to action. “Esmeral will be pissed if you return without me,” he hazarded.

“Pff. As long as she gets Primus's blood, what will she care if only one comes back?”

“Damn,” said Jackpot. He winced. The heat of his frame was painful. Jackpot sat down on the cavern floor and tucked his legs in. What did he expect from a mech who could order a black diamond to kill itself? “Don't you get it?”

“Get what?”

“Esmeral sent me here to die. Probably as a warning or punishment to Swindle. And she swapped you out with Acid Storm cuz... well, I don't know exactly. But you must've lost your use to her. Acid Storm's still valuable. You're not. She sent you with me to die.”

“She would never!”

“She already did,” said Jackpot. “Don't you remember all the X's on the entrance to this tunnel? Even the pink one?” He jutted his chin at the cavern wall. “There must be hundreds of ways to get here. But she sent us on a dangerous, blocked off path.”

Shadow Striker shook her head. “I've worked for Esmeral since the beginning. She would never waste me like that!”

“She wasted four others, didn't she? Tell me, did Drill Bit or the triple changer or the other guys piss her off before she sent them down here?”

Shadow Striker's thigh wheels spun. Her field ebbed and flowed with anger.

“Guess loyalty doesn't get you much with the big boss, does it?”

Shadow Striker scowled. “I've been loyal to her for ages!”

“Yeah. And Swindle turned me over to Roadgrabber even though I've been his runner ever since the fad started. Even though I'm _the best runner_ in Uraya.” Jackpot's limbs locked up as his frame desperately sought to save its dwindling resources. “I can't move anymore, by the way,” he said. “I'm down to 5%. Are you gonna help me or not? Cuz if not, maybe you could smash my face in with a giant crystal before you continue on. I think that might be... a faster way to go than starving to death.”

“Probably less painful, too,” said Shadow Striker, nodding.

“Yeah.” Jackpot's spirits fell. Shadow Striker didn't show any signs of empathy or understanding or caring at all. She stood perfectly still, staring at him.

Jackpot imagined she was doing equations in her head, like all the black diamond mechs did. Equations to determine if his _entire life_ was worth the inconvenience of setting up a transfusion and the loss of her own energon.

She touched her hip, where her subspace compartment was. She shook her head minutely and scowled.

Shadow Striker stalked over and sat down next to him. “You got vials on you? The kind for biolight collecting?”

Jackpot didn't have enough energy to stuff his irritation away. “What does _that_ have to do with anything?”

“Esmeral told us to only bring back one vial. But do you have more than one on you?”

“Yeah. Why?”

She pulled back a panel on her shoulder and extended a flexible tube. “I have four tanks. So far I've used less than half of one. My inefficiency kicks in when I transform and drive at turbo speeds. But that's not happening anytime soon. If we find Primus's blood, you're gonna sneak back a second vial for me. If you swear to do that, I'll help you now.”

Jackpot groaned as the heat of starvation burned through him. His spark sent little tendrils of energy through the weakened sides of its chamber, scorching the inside of his chest, seeking energon to cool and feed itself. “Yeah,” he gasped. “Yeah, I'll do that.”

Her eyes flashed. “Deal.” She plugged the tube into his side. The mechanism at its end spun and locked into place. “How much do you need?”

“Anything you can spare. Like I said...” his visor flashed and dimmed. “Low efficiency model here.”

“Hmm.” Shadow Striker took a deep breath and her frame made a clicking sound. “Ow,” she said softly.

Red energon flowed down the tube. Jackpot watched it, relief flooding his field. “What do you want the second vial for?”

Shadow Striker gave him a long look. Finally, she said, “it's private.”

“Okay... we're not bringing two vials back, though.”

Surprise and anger flashed across Shadow Striker's face. She snatched the tube, but before she could pull it out, Jackpot said hastily, “we're bringing back _three.”_

“Oh.” She let go of the tube and eyed him. “What's the third one for?”

“That's private.”

“Hmph. You aiming to fix yourself? Fix whatever's dragging your efficiency down? Or would you sell it on the side? Esmeral _really_ won't like that. No matter how you do it, she'll find out.”

“I won't sell it. I'm not that stupid.”

“Heh.”

“But yeah... it'd be for me.”

Shadow Striker leaned back a bit, wincing as the tube tugged, and settled against her own twisted alt mode pieces. She pulled a hammer from subspace. “Once you can, you're straightening out my damn shield.”

The red energon hit his lines and sizzled against what had been there before. Jackpot grit his teeth against the sting. It was fast- Shadow Striker's energon soon overran the remnants of Swindle's good stuff. Her energon was mid tier quality. He'd burn through it a little faster than what he'd gotten from Swindle. But it was better than nothing.

It was _so much_ better than nothing.

“Thanks,” he said softly, looking away from the tube.

She grunted. “Welcome.”

After a few minutes, Jackpot's processor cleared of errors and his frame began to cool. He breathed a sigh of relief and reactivated his non-essential systems. His visor brightened. Shadow Striker noticed.

“I got a question,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I know others of your frame type.” She jutted her chin at him.

_Uh oh, here we go,_ thought Jackpot.

“And they are _way_ more efficient than you. I don't see any big mods on ya. And you certainly don't have any processor upgrades. You wouldn't've forgotten to fill up if you did. Dumbaft. So, what's your story? Why don't you burn cleaner?”

“I told you, it's the luck-”

“No,” she said. “Don't lie to me. We're connected right now. I can feel something weird in you. Something hungry.”

Jackpot brushed his chest. “It's _personal.”_

“Are you kidding me?” Shadow Striker nudged the tube between them. “You're filling up on my vintage.” She stretched her legs out in front of her. Her thigh wheels spun lazily. “We're stuck here for a while. Entertain me.”

Jackpot sighed. “You want the short version or the long version?”

“Medium.”

He sighed again. “Okay. I was forged on the top of The Fractured Plateau, which, as you might've heard, collapsed... _while_ I was still being gathered up by the caretakers. I was the only protoform that survived the collapse. All the other sparks were snuffed out. Several of the caretakers were killed, too.”

Shadow Striker frowned.

“But I lived! Lucky little me.” 

She tapped his forehead. “You were _born_ lucky!”

“Yeah. And the price of that luck was so great it sucked all the energon out of my little body. It collapsed my spark chamber inwards.” Jackpot made the shape of a ball with his hands. “You know how spark chambers are round?” He moved his palms together. “Mine's like a corrugated tube. The sides push against my spark.”

Shadow Striker shifted.

“You know how spark chambers work, right?” asked Jackpot. She shrugged. “Sparks are _powerful_. The inside of the chamber is lined with special metal that keeps your spark contained. It keeps your spark safe from the outside world and keeps your frame safe from your spark. But _my_ spark is being squeezed between the walls. The special metal's thinned out. The chamber walls are warped.” Jackpot took a deep breath. Here it was. The big secret. The thing he didn't tell anyone because it exposed just how fragile he really was. “My spark... grabs all the energon it can from its surroundings. It's like there's a hole in my lines. Energon cycles around til it gets there and just... burns up.”

“Right now?” Shadow Striker eyed his chest.

“Yeah. All the time.” 

“What does that _feel_ like?”

“It hurts if I think about it. Most of the time it's okay.” Jackpot glanced at the huge crystals in the cave. “My spark eats my energon at a certain rate. And then every time something lucky happens, _that_ takes a percentage of my fuel, too. I don't know why. It's like the... penalty. The payment. Put the two together and I don't stray far from home.” He gave her a weak smile. “Only Swindle knows why I exclusively hit the light clubs within a two hour drive radius of the safe house.”

Shadow Striker nodded. Jackpot wasn't surprised that she took this all in stride. The very, very few times he'd explained it to people outside the business, they hadn't believed him. But Shadow Striker worked for Esmeral. She knew _everything_ had its price. “That's quite a weakness,” she said. “If someone locked you up for a few days you'd be dead, even if you never moved.”

“Yeah.”

“Good thing you never pissed off the black diamond mechs,” she said. “You'd be a plaything for them.”

_“Thanks.”_

“You're an expensive one.” Shadow Striker tapped her chin. “I always wondered why Swindle constantly complained about his runners when he had the best numbers. Must've been _you_ skewing his ration stock.”

“Yeah...”

“Why didn't the medics fix your chamber?” she asked.

“They tried. They wanted to widen my chamber, solder some cross beams in there, but they said it was too dangerous. They didn't want to damage my spark. I've had a couple drip procedures. They dripped some of that special metal in there where it was thinnest. But that stuff is _really_ hard to find pure and it's too expensive to make. In the meantime, I've had so many energon transfusions I can accept them from any spark type. I mean, obviously, I use neutral fuel most of the time. But every once in a while...” he trailed off and waved at the tube connecting them. “So, it's just... better I can receive from anyone.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yeah. Every time a new type hits my lines, it burns the previous type away.”

“But you don't get the shock reaction.”

“No.”

“Lucky,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” he said. “That's kind of the point.”

Shadow Striker nodded. She pulled chunks of rust from her subspace compartment and laid them out beside her. They were followed by a large rectangular object that opened like a book. Jackpot tilted his head to see it better.

The inside of the object was lined with clear compartments, like a specimen cabinet in miniature. About half of the compartments housed a piece of rust, each a different color. They were hand-labeled in faded ink. At the top, in a script style that had been out of use for millennia, was written _**Rusts of Interest**_. Beneath that, smaller, was, _**Roulette**_.

“Who's Roulette?”

Shadow Striker didn't answer. She carefully deposited the rust samples she'd taken into separate compartments. She looked at the collection, her field pulled in as tightly as possible, her face pinched.

Jackpot remembered back to what she had asked Esmeral before they'd left, eyes lowered in submission. _“Can I see her, before I go? Can I say goodbye?”_

And her glared, _“There's things I woulda done before we left, if I had known.”_

Those things seemed connected in retrospect. And... important.

“Is she your conjunx?” asked Jackpot.

Shadow Striker's eyes flashed. She snapped the collection together and stuffed it back in her subspace compartment. “No.” She leaned back on her kibble and glared.

Jackpot sighed inwardly. Further explanation would not be forthcoming. He stretched his legs and arms and fluttered the tiny plates across his frame. “I'm feeling better already.”

She nodded. “Do you know how the light craze started?”

“No.”

“Esmeral.”

Jackpot tilted his helm. “Really? How? I thought it was the upper class.”

“After her injury, she tried all kinds of things to remove the eye-bomb. Transplanted nerves from other mechs, malware, software. She even stripped one mech clean out of his processor and tried to install the orphaned software into the eye-bomb. Didn't work.”

Jackpot grimaced.

“Then she tried different energons. Made all of us give her some of ours. Tanked fuel, line energon, biolights, innermost energon. Even ocular.” She pointed to her eye. “Took my frame ages to filter and condense more to relight my eye. But nothing worked.”

“Damn.”

“She only trusted her own guards for clean energon. But she wanted more... and more different types. Esmeral isn't the kind of mech to take what she wants and be done with it. She created a whole new market, an underground ecosystem whose entire purpose is to serve her. She sent her beautiful mechs to inject biolight fluid at high class parties. It was a taboo, years and years ago. But all the sudden, all these fancy rich mechs were doing it. Jumpstarted the market. And now Esmeral can get her hands on any kind of energon she wants, and make a killing off of it, too.”

“But we only collect bioli-”

“Yeah,” said Shadow Striker. “Biolight's for runners, cuz the donor lives. The black diamonds gather the innermost and ocular energon.”

“I thought rich mechs didn't like ocular!”

“They don't know what it is when they inject it. It's packaged as 'non-edible.' What they know and want doesn't matter anyway. It's what Esmeral knows and wants that matters.”

“Oh.” 

Shadow Striker crossed her legs and regarded him. “You started running at the beginning, right?”

“Yeah. I was in massive debt from all the medical procedures. Had to pay it off somehow. After I won ten outta ten rounds in one of Swindle's fixed betting games, he brought me on.” Jackpot's grin slowly turned down into a frown. “He hired me for the new venture. It paid better than playing the games. And I liked the family. If we make it back, though, I don't think I could keep working for him.” He scratched his neck. “I wonder if I can find someone to remove the tattoos...”

“Tell me,” Shadow Striker said, looking directly at him. “How many of the runners in your family that started when you did are still alive now?”

“Uh.” Jackpot thought back. _Devcon, Gusher, Sunburn..._ “Um. None of them.”

“You runners are disposable.”

“Hey! We do the most important par-”

“I mean, you're considered disposable by Esmeral. Dying all over the place all the time. Gettin' seen. Gettin' taken off the market.” 

Jackpot thought of Bluestreak's terrified face when Vorp had vanished.

“You're too soft for this business. The only reason _you've_ made it this far is because you're lucky.”

A mixture of embarrassment and pride went through Jackpot. “I'm not _soft.”_ He scowled. “You can't go through these tunnels for thousands of years and be _soft.”_

She smiled slightly.

“But yeah... I figured the luck was part of what got me this far.” Jackpot gestured to the tube connecting them. “Despite what you might think, I'm not totally stupid.”

“Good.” Shadow Striker's thigh wheels turned slowly. “I think as long as you don't run out of fuel, you'll survive this.” She jerked her thumb towards the cliff edge. “You've got a pretty good record.”

“Yeah.”

Her ocular arches furrowed. She took a breath, as if to speak, but said nothing. She took another breath. And said nothing.

“Uh...” said Jackpot. “You wanna say something?”

“Yeah. If we get Primus's blood, you know, three vials, that'll be the first time I've disobeyed an order from Esmeral since the Deathsaurus incident.”

“She won't find out.”

“She might. She's good at it.” Shadow Striker shook her head. “But I want that vial. Especially if she sent us down here to die, like you said.” She made a fist. “Fuck that. It's hard to believe. But you were right, about Drill Bit and the others. They'd pissed her off before she sent them. Little things here and there.” Shadow Striker lowered her voice. “We'd been... talking. We think the injury has started to affect her processor.”

“You _think?”_

“Yeah. But you gotta be careful when you say stuff like that. She doesn't like it. Obviously.” Shadow Striker hefted the hammer. “I didn't think she knew that I'd been involved.”

“Maybe one of those guys talked.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” 

Jackpot traced the scratches in his plating. He'd have to find somewhere aboveground that sold gold paint. Swindle's safe house reserves wouldn't be an option anymore. The excitement of a new assignment, creeping under the world, post-successful mission parties... all those things would be over now. The loss of his family twisted his insides. “What did you do during the Deathsaurus incident?”

Shadow Striker gave him a long look. “During the attack, I had the opportunity to save either Esmeral or my amica from the fire bomb. I chose wrong, in Esmeral's eyes... in her beast eyes, at least.” She smiled darkly. “Her mech eyes had already been torn out by then.”

Jackpot grimaced.

“Roulette is my amica, my best friend. We were hot spot siblings, both born with the same frame. She understands what it's like for me, for us, to live on this planet as... _malforms._ Strong, smart, but ugly.” Shadow Striker glanced at her twisted shield-like kibble. “Roulette loves Cybertron, loves all the hills and plateaus and tunnels. She collected samples everywhere we went. She loves rust especially. Someday we're gonna go to the Sea of Rust. But cuz of our frames, we couldn't find employment aboveground. The underground doesn't care what you look like, as long as you can do the job. Roulette fell in with Esmeral and I followed.”

“What happened to her?”

Shadow Striker's eyes flickered with pain. “The bomb went off. I shielded Roulette from the flames, but one of the support columns was damaged. It fell on her, injuring her severely. Maybe if she had been lucky, like you, she would've jumped out of the way in time.”

“Did she die?”

“No. She's...” Shadow Striker reset her vocalizer. “Esmeral wanted to make an example of me, but she didn't want to waste me, cuz at the time she only had a couple bodyguards and I was the best. She said she'd keep Roulette on life support if I pledged myself fully to her. If I ever cross her, Roulette's spark will be extinguished.”

“Oh.” Jackpot touched his subspace compartment, where his needles were.

“She's in quarantine, in a medical bay. Hooked up to monitors and shit. They feed her through lines, but she's never woken up.”

Jackpot frowned. “So, what's the deal? If you work off an amount of time, Esmeral will heal her?”

“Not exactly. She's gravely wounded. She needs technology that we don't have. Someone explained it once. The link between her processor and the rest of her is totally fucked. It's not something you can transplant. She needs some kind of reconstruction. Esmeral's med team can keep her alive til aboveground doctors figure it out. Once we get the tech, they'll fix her.”

“...yeah,” said Jackpot. “You actually believe that?”

“Of course I do!” Her field flashed with anger. “It's all I've got! Every day I visit her. I look down and I tell her, we're one day closer.”

“'Look down'?”

“She's quarantined. The ceiling to her room is glass, the floor of an observation deck. I see her from there.” Shadow Striker frowned. “But they're taking care of her. All her monitors and shit are good. I check them every day. Her sparkbeat is strong. She just needs something to help her wake up. And I didn't have a lot of hope...” she looked Jackpot in the visor, “until now.”

~~

It was fair to say that very few mechs had had as many direct transfusions as Jackpot. And of those, very few of them had had transfusions of energon that wasn't their own type. And even fewer still had lived through it. So Jackpot considered himself an authority on it. 

Neutral fuel worked the same way for everyone. It was either raw energon, or recycled energon that was neutralized- able to be consumed by any mech without contraindications. Some mechs stored the neutral fuel in its own tank before processing it, but most had a series of filters and sensors that it flowed through, removing natural impurities and mixing in the molecules that marked it as their type. Then, processed to be most efficiently used by that mech, it was stored in their tanks.

Any given mech's energon, with all its personalized markers and additives, didn't work well for a mech of a different type. The rare mech could drink it and process it back to neutral. But most couldn't without side effects. A mech could inject a small amount of another's energon into their biolights, because biolights were glass lined-vessels, separated from the main lines by thick barriers. But no one could get away with a direct line transfusion outside their own type without risking the shock reaction.

Except Jackpot, whose luck kept him alive while simultaneously feasting on that very same energon.

And so, when Jackpot transfused another mech's energon and it made him _feel_ different, no one could tell him otherwise, because he was the only mech alive who could survive the event.

Shadow Striker's line energon made him feel stronger, and braver, and sadder.


	3. The Spark Chamber

Shadow Striker directed them to a tunnel at the far side of the massive cavern. It was uneven and steep, leading them deeper into Cybertron faster than the previous tunnels had. The uncomfortable warmth returned. Every time they turned a corner, she muted their footsteps with her sound cloak. The tunnel was studded with tiny crystals. Slime bubbled madly from the junction where the crystals grew from the wall. Their faint ringing sounds echoed across the audials.

“Why are these so small?” asked Jackpot. He very, very carefully touched the slime beneath a crystal. It welled up over his finger, warm. It had a familiar scent Jackpot couldn't place.

Shadow Striker shrugged. “I don't know. Roulette used to ask those kinds of questions, too.”

“Did you notice that the small ones make that sound and ooze stuff, but the big ones don't have any slime? And they're quiet?”

“Not really.”

“What does it mean?”

Shadow Striker scowled. “I don't _know._ Stop asking me.”

“The further down we go, the more slime there is,” said Jackpot. “Where does it all go?”

Shadow Striker's field flashed with annoyance. She flicked her kibble. Jackpot had done the best he could to straighten it with a hammer. It was still badly dented, paint peeling off in flakes and swaths. “Don't make me regret sharing energon with you.”

Jackpot didn't shrink away. He grinned. “Do you think the baby crystals are explosive? Think I could snap one off the wall?”

“You'll blow your fingers off,” said Shadow Striker. 

“I kinda want one.” Jackpot pulled out his knife. He picked a tiny victim and wedged the blade under it, careful not to disturb any of its neighbors.

Shadow Striker shook her head. “You better be feeling lucky.”

He checked his fuel gauge. Since Shadow Striker had never cut him off, Jackpot had filled _all_ his tanks. With the higher volume to draw from, even though they'd been walking around a while, he was still at 99%.

“Yup,” said Jackpot. With a grunt, he popped the tiny crystal out of the wall. The empty space squelched and filled with ooze. Jackpot held it, grinning, his fingers slick with slime. “I bet no one's done that before!”

“Because no one's been stupid enough to try,” said Shadow Striker. But she stepped closer. “What does it feel like?”

“It feels...” The tiny crystal vibrated against his fingertips. Jackpot's processor automatically assessed the vibrations and readjusted his sensors. Jackpot's optical ridges furrowed. One moment, the crystal felt like a regular crystal. The next... “That can't be right,” he muttered.

“What?”

“It feels... _alive.”_ He passed it to Shadow Striker. “It has a field.”

_“What?”_ She took it. Her eyes flashed as her own processor adjusted. “I can feel it!”

Jackpot rubbed the slime between his fingertips. “And it smells familiar. But I can't place it.”

“Sparkling's energon,” said Shadow Striker. She held the crystal away from herself, as if it were a live grenade. “It smells like sparkling's energon!”

“It does. That's so _weird,”_ said Jackpot. He retrieved a vial and carefully placed the tiny crystal inside it. “The vials are indestructible. If the crystal decides to explode, we'll be okay.”

“Uh huh,” Shadow Striker said. “Put it in your subspace compartment.”

Jackpot did so. “I have my own souvenir.” He held his hands out to the walls as they walked. “Now that my processor knows what it's looking for, I can feel their fields.” 

The tiny crystal fields melded together from a distance, like a group of mechs' fields did. They blanketed the tunnel, seeming to run infinitely in every direction. For a moment, Jackpot wondered if they were all connected together. If he interacted with the crystals here, could they send a signal down the length of the entire tunnel? A mech in deep enough distress could do something like that if they were in a thick crowd. Hell, that was half the appeal of a light club. So many frames smashed together having a good time meant _everyone_ felt good.

Jackpot walked closer to the wall. Nearer, he could pick out each individual crystal's field. They were rudimentary, even more primitive than a non-sentient beast's field. Jackpot was struck with a fascinating thought. “Do you think they have _feelings?”_

“I don't _know,”_ said Shadow Striker. “I don't _care.”_

-2%

Jackpot stiffened. Shadow Striker noticed immediately. She stopped. The tinging of the crystals vanished. All Jackpot could hear was the energon pumping through his lines. 

They looked up and down the tunnel.

Nothing.

The tinging returned as Shadow Striker lifted her cloak. “You _did_ just get some kind of forewarning, right?” she asked. “Your field flooded with fear like before.”

“Yeah,” said Jackpot. 

Shadow Striker's eyes flashed. “I've attuned to their energy signatures, but my sensors can't see around corners.”

“Do you have any kind of echolocational or seismographic ability?” asked Jackpot. “You could pair them up to look ahead.”

“I don't. If I did, I would've done that already.” She frowned. “Get behind me.” She pulled her gun from her waist and held her shield up.

Jackpot didn't argue. He tucked himself in behind her, peering between her kibble. They walked forward slowly, carefully. Jackpot gave soft warnings when her bent kibble threatened to scrape the sides of the tunnel. Shadow Striker adjusted her stance. In places, she had to turn sideways to fit through.

She led them confidently through several forks in the tunnels, until she came to a stop.

“Does the map end here?” asked Jackpot.

Shadow Striker nodded. 

The tunnel to the left was knee-high with slime. The tunnel to the right was dry. And had claw marks all around its entrance.

“Great choices,” said Jackpot.

“What do your instincts tell you?” she asked.

“I really, really don't wanna go right.”

Shadow Striker smiled. “Then we go right.”

Jackpot groaned.

She strode forward, pointing at the ground. “Tracks. We'll follow them.”

“You said you fought a beast thing, before,” said Jackpot. “What was it, exactly?”

“I don't know. It looked like a sparkeater, but bigger. It ran on four limbs, not two like a mech.”

“Did it have glowing yellow eyes?”

“Yes. Like the remnants did.” Shadow Striker shifted her gun to her other hand and retrieved a club from subspace. It was several pipes welded together with bits of broken glass and shrapnel poking out. It was spattered with congealed energon. “They won't stop if you melt them.You gotta smash their heads.”

“Ugh.”

“You really need a weapon,” said Shadow Striker. Her silver engine blurred as they silently turned another corner. “Maybe you can use that.”

In the middle of the pathway was half of a drill, ripped open lengthways, coated in blood and slime. The ground all around it was clawed and bloody. A trail of blood led further down the tunnel where something had been dragged away. Broken metal and glass littered the scene.

“Ew,” whispered Jackpot.

“Drill Bit must've died here,” said Shadow Striker. “The first time, I mean.” She pointed. “He fought. Evidence of acid blasts.” The crystals were scrubbed clean with something that had dripped down the wall. 

Jackpot gingerly stepped up to the dead mech's kibble.

“Pick it up,” Shadow Striker said.

“Gross. No.”

“Do it,” she said. “We were just saying you could use a weapon and here it is. It's like Primus himself handed you a gift.”

“This is the worst gift I've ever gotten, including that time Swindle gave me a talking action figure of himself. If you didn't feed it a shanix every hour, it yelled at you. Ugh.” Jackpot made disgusted noises as he picked up the half-drill. He found a dry patch of ground to scrape part of it against so he'd have a somewhat clean handle. Circuitry and raw wires with snapped ends dangled from it. This wasn't armor or kibble. This had been part of Drill Bit's frame proper. Jackpot hefted the makeshift club over his shoulder. The raw wires tickled his back. “This is barbaric.”

“Heh.” 

“If I die, will you use my arm in battle?”

“No.” Shadow Striker eyed him. “Your leg would be better. But first I'll smash your head in so you don't turn into one of them.”

Jackpot shuddered. 

“Look, whatever attacked him dragged him away.” Shadow Striker indicated deep, even cuts in the path. The tracks half a drill would make if something pulled it. “The real question is,” said Shadow Striker, “if Drill Bit was killed here, and then dragged further _into_ the tunnel, how did he end up back where we fought him?”

“I have no idea,” said Jackpot.

“He walked,” said Shadow Striker. “But how?”

Jackpot thought back to the mech's clawed-open spark chamber. “What color were his eyes when he was alive?”

“Blue.”

“They were yellow when we fought him,” said Jackpot.

“Huh. True...”

“Do you think the-”

-3%

Jackpot froze. 

Shadow Striker brandished her club. “Know what's weird,” she said softly, stepping toward him. He scooted behind her. “Now that I've attuned to the crystals' fields, I can tell you...” she paused a moment, eyes flickering with lenses, “...that the beasts have the same energy signature.” She rattled off a series of numbers, directions on how to modify his sensors in kind.

She squatted. Jackpot followed. He frantically linked processor components together, trying to implement her mod. Just as the last component clicked into place and the software activated, he felt it.

Something, a thing that felt like a giant crystal, was coming towards them. It registered like a wave in the fields, like a low note propagating through the delicate chorus of the crystals' tings.

“I feel it!”

She nodded once. Her eyes narrowed.

Jackpot suddenly realized how _loud_ he and Shadow Striker were. How strange and invasive their fields must feel against the omnipresent blanket of crystals. 

“I have a theory on how they find us,” Jackpot whispered.

“How?”

“Through the crystals' fields.”

Shadow Striker blinked. “That's...” suddenly she yanked her own field in. “That makes so much sense. Shit, we're really loud here.”

“Yeah.” Jackpot pulled his field in tight.

The _thing_ around the corner paused, turned in a complete circle, and resumed its march towards them.

“Here it comes,” said Shadow Striker. She holstered the gun and gripped her club with both hands.

Jackpot swallowed and held the half drill in kind.

Four narrow, golden triangles appeared on the ground, peeking out from around the corner. Jackpot reset his visor. _What?_ Another four triangles materialized next to them.

Just as his processor registered the triangles as claw tips, they dug into the tunnel floor and a golden beast launched itself towards them.

Time seemed to slow.

The beast's claws parted the air before it: it was rippling gold metal, its plates tipped with spines. It looked like a turbofox retooled for an ancient war. Its body hovered, glistening in the light of the crystals. Its eyes were gold, its regal head framed with mane-like plates decorated with swirling, golden biolights.

It was _beautiful._

“Raagh!” Shadow Striker smashed her club down onto its head. Time resumed. The beast roared like the tinging of crystals twisted into thunder. Jackpot jumped back. Little bits of glass and metal remained in its head as Shadow Striker pulled her club away. There was a spatter of golden blood beneath the beast.

It swiped at her. She dodged. 

Jackpot held the half drill, his crunched knees shaking. He watched the beast's paws, remembering how the remnants moved. This thing was probably fast.

“Its peripheral vision is bad!” shouted Shadow Striker. She backed up to the wall and waved at the beast. “I'll lure it this way, flank it!”

“Got it!” Jackpot edged around the side as the beast reared forward again.

Shadow Striker grit her teeth. She didn't have a lot of room to maneuver. With an anguished yell, she bent her own kibble more flush to her forearm so she could back further up to the wall. The beast pounced. The club went down.

_Smash!_

The beast roared, its tail a breath's distance from Jackpot's foot. He yanked it back. The beast didn't notice him. It snapped its jaws and flexed its claws. Shadow Striker swore at it.

As Jackpot moved, the crystals' fields washed over his plating. It wasn't unpleasant. As he watched the beast charge, waiting for an opportune time to strike, he got an idea. He pulled his field in as tightly as he could, then vibrated it to the tune of the crystals. It shook different parts of his plating at different frequencies, shuddering over his protoform unevenly.

Now _that_ felt unpleasant.

“Hrgh.” Jackpot moaned and stepped toward the beast on shaky feet. Shadow Striker was spattered with golden blood and shrapnel. 

The beast jumped and bit her forearm. She yelled, more out of anger than pain. It had immobilized her club-wielding arm. She punched it in the throat with her other hand. In turn, it clawed at her engine block, rupturing some of its components as it dug for her spark. “Augh! You wretched thing!”

Jackpot edged closer, closer, mentally berating himself for how long it took to move, but the field modification was so uncomfortable...

Blood streamed down Shadow Striker's chest. She kicked at the beast, her eyes flashing red to white.

The beast didn't seem to notice Jackpot...

Its claws came up again and Shadow Striker turned sideways, trying to make herself as small a target as possible. Her kibble swung dangerously close to the crystals on the wall.

Jackpot's fuel gauge ticked down as he aimed the drill. He dropped his modified shield vibration. The sensation swept through the crystal field like the shockwave of a bomb. The beast snarled and turned to him, pulling Shadow Striker with it. Jackpot thrust the tip of the drill into its eye. The ocular glass shattered. Jackpot pushed as hard as he could.

The beast howled and released Shadow Striker's arm. Her field flashed with rage. The beast swung its head back and forth trying to dislodge the drill, clawing the ground, sending sprays of liquid gold in all directions. 

Shadow Striker smashed her club down again. The beast collapsed, twitching. Shadow Striker threw her club aside and yanked the half drill out. The beast's mane-like plates went limp. Its claws shook. Its body went still.

Shadow Striker didn't seem to notice. Or care. She stabbed its head over and over, screaming with rage and pain, until Jackpot shouted, “hey!”

She turned to him, eyes white, shoulders hunched. 

He stepped back, raising his arms in self defense. “It's me, Jackpot!” 

She blinked. Her eyes reddened.

“Hey, wow. Uh. Thought you were gonna kill me next,” said Jackpot. He tried not to look at the beast's punctured head, dozens of jagged holes leaking gold fluid. “Are you okay?”

Shadow Striker looked down at her chest. She pushed the slashed areas of her engine back together. The silver metal screamed between her fingers. Jackpot winced. “I'll be okay.” She tossed the half drill to him. Jackpot lost another percentage catching it without stabbing himself. “Ugh.” Shadow Striker brushed blood from her frame. 

“Wow. That thing...” started Jackpot. He didn't know what to say. He looked at the gold-stained tip of the half drill. He raised his runner's lens. The reticules centered on the golden blood, but the readout came up **_??-??_** “It's fucking deadly, but beautiful. You didn't tell me the beasts were golden.”

“The other one wasn't,” she spat. She picked up her club. From the small movements of her plating, Jackpot could tell she was running a damage scan on her own frame. Her biolights flickered.

“Did you... did you notice what color its blood is?”

Shadow Striker glared at him like he had just said the stupidest thing she'd ever heard. Then her gaze moved downwards and her eyes widened. “Holy fuck!”

“I think this beast... was made by Primus,” said Jackpot. “It's regal-looking. Maybe it protects his golden pool.”

“Yeah...” She nudged it. Its golden body didn't fade, even in death. “No one's ever seen anything like this near the surface.”

Jackpot brushed his chest. “Maybe they can't stray far from the source.”

Shadow Striker glanced at his hand, held over his spark. She nodded. 

“I think we must be close. Some of its blood got on you,” said Jackpot. “Is it... healing you? Can you feel it?”

Shadow Striker looked at her gold-stained hands. “I don't feel anything.” She wiped the blood onto her wounded engine. It mixed with her own, making a muddy, glistening red. “It's not healing me... How did you sneak up on it? It didn't even register you. I couldn't feel you, either.”

“I tried to mimic the crystals' fields with my own,” said Jackpot.

“Damn,” she said. Her mouth twisted. “That's not easy to do.”

“No. That's why I was moving so slowly.”

“Ah. I was gonna beat your aft for taking so long.” Shadow Striker's field buzzed. It twisted in and out as she tried to replicate the crystals' fields. “Fuck,” she said after a few minutes. “I can't do it. It's making my plating ache.”

“If another one attacks, I'll sneak up on it, like I did this one,” said Jackpot. “I'll try to be faster.”

“Yeah,” she said. She kicked the beast one last time and stepped forward. “Let's go.”

“I wonder if popping that tiny crystal out of the wall summoned it,” said Jackpot.

_“What?”_ Shadow Striker rubbed her temples. “I'm not even gonna ask why you think that might be. This shit is all so weird. So, sure. Maybe that was it. Don't fucking touch any more of the crystals.”

“I won't.” 

~~

The tunnel continued downward. The crystals got smaller, their tings more shrill. The air was hotter and hotter. Jackpot and Shadow Striker overrode their venting protocols to run over max capacity. Jackpot panted. Shadow Striker blasted hot air from her thighs.

“This sucks,” said Jackpot.

“Yeah.” 

“Do you smell that?”

Shadow Striker wrinkled her nose. “Sparkling's energon.”

They followed the trail of blood and drill-marks until they came to a strange curve in the tunnel. The wall was covered in so many tiny crystals, it looked fuzzy. Slime squelched beneath their feet.

Jackpot leaned into the curve, measuring the walls with his visor. “This goes in a perfect circle,” said Jackpot. “I've never seen a perfect circle cut into the tunnels before. They're usually jagged.” 

Shadow Striker tucked her kibble in as best she could and gripped her club.

They followed the curving tunnel.

“Do you feel that?” asked Shadow Striker.

“Yeah.” Jackpot held up his arm. “Thudding... look, it's strong enough to shake my plating.”

“Mine, too.”

As the tunnel curved around, the thudding came louder and stronger. It reached a frame-rattling peak when the tunnel opened into a spherical cave. Jackpot and Shadow Striker ducked to the sides, peeking out. Their jaws dropped.

After a few moments of stunned silence, Shadow Striker asked, “is that what I fucking _think_ it is?” 

“Y- yeah.”

A gigantic, golden orb with a massive golden column going through it sat in the middle of the cave. The orb rotated slowly, its plates closing and opening just enough to let out a blinding light. Every time the light shone through, Jackpot and Shadow Striker's plating sizzled with charge. Arching, aqueduct-like structures from the cave walls channeled slime into the top of the gold column. The slime was fed into the rotating orb. Flowing out from the bottom of the orb was a current of pure gold liquid. It lapped across the floor and swirled into hidden drains. 

“That's Primus's fucking spark chamber,” whispered Jackpot. He clutched his chest as the orb's plates shifted, issuing out plumes of steam. His spark beat erratically, trying to match the thudding sparkbeat in the cave. “It purifies the slime into sparkling's blood to feed the planet. I can't believe what I'm seeing.” Jackpot held his arm up. His own gold plating was dull and lifeless in comparison to the orb's. It shook. 

“Spark chambers don't purify things! That's what the fuel line filters are for.”

“Tell that to _him,”_ said Jackpot. “You got a different theory?”

“No.”

Jackpot's processor ached. He looked away from the blinding light inside the orb. The tiny crystals in the wall glittered. Something in his processor clicked. “You know what happens to energon when it sits around, right?”

“What?”

“It crystalizes.”

Shadow Striker's eyes brightened as she took that in. She sank down, jutting her thighs outwards, venting heat. “Shit.”

“Yeah. The tunnel walls must be soaked with his blood. And it's too cold, up by the surface, for his blood to flow. So it crystalizes. That's where the crystals come from. And the slime is the part that _doesn't_ crystalize, so it flows back down here-”

“All the tinging and humming, that's his field. It goes through the entire underground-”

“It's _all_ him.”

“Primus never left Cybertron. Primus _is_ Cybertron.” She scowled at the crystal-lined wall. “This is fucking overwhelming. The implications are insane. All the old stories are wrong.” Shadow Striker gripped the sides of her helm. “The calls for expansion. The steadfast hierarchy! This whole thing makes my processor ache!” She glared at the golden orb. “My spark is thudding. I don't think regular mechs are supposed to sit around in god's heart. Let's get what we need and then get the fuck out of here.”

“Yeah.” A flicker of movement caught Jackpot's attention. Shadow Striker caught it, too. “Damn.”

Several beasts were lounging around the orb. They flicked their tails lazily. Some were sleeping, others paddled happily in the pool of purified blood. 

Shadow Striker narrowed her eyes. “A direct assault won't work. We're outnumbered.”

Jackpot took a moment to contemplate a mind that celebrated its religious revelation with _'a direct assault on god won't work.'_

“There's no cover to hide behind. Can you do your field thing and get close enough to the pool to fill your vials?”

“Uh.” Jackpot watched the beasts. He imagined their glittering claws slashing his chest open. “I don't think I could do it for that long.”

“Hmm.” Shadow Striker looked around the room methodically. “We'll find a way up to the aqueducts. You can walk across and get to the spark chamber.”

Jackpot glanced up. Layers of aqueducts fed into the gold column at different heights, like spokes in a wheel. “That sounds a billion times easier to say than to do.”

“Yeah, but you won't fall. Or if you do, you won't land on the beasts. Somehow.” Shadow Striker gave him a dark grin. “And if you do, I've got a spare tank you can have. If all this golden blood won't do.”

The half drill in Jackpot's hands suddenly felt heavy. “Wait,” he said. “What if the blood is _dangerous?_ I think the beast dragged Drill Bit back here and threw him into the pool. And then he... climbed out again. Sparkling's energon. It gives life! But he was dead... so... that's how he became a remnant.”

“Then don't die and you'll be fine,” said Shadow Striker. She pointed to her engine. “The blood didn't hurt me. I'm still alive. It's not doing anything, actually... oh, wait.” She smeared the golden blood around. The metal beneath had partially braided together. “Oh! It did work! It healed some of my cuts.”

Jackpot's spark and processor ached, but suddenly, all he wanted was a vial full of that golden blood for himself. “Help me find a way up.”

They scouted around the tunnels until they found one that led to the upper chamber. Jackpot crawled out onto the edge of an aqueduct. On one side was a drop to the beast-infested blood pool below. On the other was the aqueduct channel, filled with yellow slime. Dirt from all over the world swirled in it. Gelatinous chunks clung to the sides of the channel, forming eddies in the main flow.

“Ugh,” said Jackpot.

This close to the orb, the sparkbeat within was overpowering. Primus's spark vibrated through Jackpot's whole frame. It felt almost like tendrils reaching through him, beckoning his spark to leave its broken shell and join a dazzling new reality.

Shadow Striker had her hands pressed against her helm, eyes dim. “I can't... stand... the sparkbeat. Hurry up.”

Jackpot tuned his audials down and inched along the lip of the aqueduct. 

He stared at the orb, processor slowly numbing in the presence of the sparkbeat of the planet. _How the hell am I supposed to get down there, where the good blood is... it's not like there are ladders._ The outside of the orb was smooth and rotated slowly. He and Shadow Striker hadn't planned this far. It was hard to think...

Lines ran through the metal plates of the orb. In a regular-sized mech, they would be the width of the processor's finest wires. But on Primus's spark chamber, they were as wide as Jackpot's hand. Blearily, Jackpot recognized the layout from all the procedures he'd had. _The spark chamber's internal system. The innermost energon. The energon it uses to power itself..._

Jackpot fumbled for his subspace compartment. The subspace opening, which usually flickered obediently open when he entered his key, struggled in the presence of Primus's spark. _Never had a subspace compartment refuse to open before,_ thought Jackpot. _Come on, come **on**._

-10%

Jackpot winced as the luck toll plucked at his erratic spark. The compartment key went through. Jackpot shoved his hand in and grabbed three vials. He set them, shaking, onto his thigh. “Okay,” he said, his own voice scarcely audible. “Sorry, Primus.” He flicked the cap open and stabbed the needle in. His processor danced on the horrifying thought that the tranquilizer might stop the entire planet from rotating.

The needle punctured the gold metal. The assembly inverted and glittering, golden blood filled the vial. Jackpot's hand shook. He held it still with his other hand and leaned forward, bracing his elbow on Primus's spark chamber. His audials rang with a range of low and high-pitched tings. The tendrils he thought he could feel – where they really there?? - swirled around the inside of his chest.

Jackpot had to move with the vial as the orb rotated. His fuel gauge ticked downwards as the vial finished filling just in time, before the line moved beyond his reach and he'd be forced over the edge of the aqueduct. 

“One down,” he said. White static crept at the edges of his visor. He reset it. Jackpot grabbed the next needle and waited for another line to rotate within reach. He stabbed it, held the vial, counted to twenty-five before it was released. His sparkbeat was now totally erratic, his processor filling with errors, his fuel gauge ticking downward as each beat failed to short circuit his system.

_One... more..._ Jackpot stabbed the last needle in. Just as the needles reversed, he realized this was the vial he had put the small crystal into as a keepsake. _Oh... no..._ he thought, his entire being saturated through with a tired staticky feeling. _I hope... it doesn't... explode_.

Jackpot's arms weakened. His visor filled with white noise. Even though he had shut his audials completely off, his helm rang. He shook his head. Jackpot pushed himself away from the rotating orb, the heat pressing against his plating. He gripped the needle with all his strength. He thought it was full. He hoped so. He wrenched it from the orb way too hard, teetered backwards-

and-

fell-

~~

**.  
..  
…  
….  
…..  
…...  
…............................  
…....................  
…............  
…......................................  
….......  
…....  
…..  
….  
…  
..  
..  
…  
….  
…..  
…...  
…............................  
…....................  
…............  
…......................................  
….......  
…....  
…..  
….  
…  
..  
..  
…  
….  
…..  
…...  
…............................  
…....................  
…............  
…......................................  
….......  
…....  
…..  
….  
…  
..  
.**

~~

“You lucky fucking son of a glitch,” said a voice.

Jackpot moaned. His visor was off. He tried to rub his face but his arm didn't work. “Bluestreak?”

“Who?”

Someone shook him.

“Wake up, goddammit. Wake up.”

Jackpot reset his visor. His HUD booted up in front of a sea of white static.

87%

What the hell? That wasn't possible...

“Did you get it? Do you have the vials?”

Jackpot groaned and forcefully reset his visor. Shadow Striker shimmered into view. She was leaning over him, annoyance clear in her face. And then a flicker of relief passed through her field.

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “I got 'em.”

Shadow Striker pulled him up. Jackpot winced. 

“What happened?”

Shadow Striker scoffed. “You fell off the aqueduct _onto the aqueduct below you._ I can't fucking believe it. I would never have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.” A tube connected them together, her red energon flowing through it. “I had to crawl out onto it and get you. But do you know, in that whole chamber, those were the only two aqueducts stacked over each other _just so?”_

“Heh.” Jackpot smiled weakly. “That sounds right.”

“I couldn't tell if your frame was hot from the room or starvation so once I got us the fuck outta there, I started the transfusion.” Shadow Striker's shins and arms were deeply scratched. The edges of her kibble, which would've dipped into the aqueduct as she crawled, were coated in slime. 

“How far are we?”

“Far enough that my processor doesn't hurt anymore.” Shadow Striker shook her head. “Though we're off all the maps I had. But there might be another way to get to the surface. What's your fuel gauge at?”

“89%”

“Good enough.” Shadow Striker disengaged her tubing and coiled it back into her shoulder. Slowly, she stood, dirt and slime making her joints shriek. She held out her hand. “Up.”

Jackpot gripped it. She pulled him to his feet. He swayed and steadied himself. “Thanks.”

“Show me the vials.”

Jackpot opened his subspace compartment and pulled them out. They were filled with glittering, golden liquid.

“My god,” said Shadow Striker. She took one and held it up. “We didn't just get Primus's blood, we got his _innermost energon.”_

“What do you mean, 'we'?”

“Oh, shut up. You never would've made it down here without me.” Shadow Striker grinned. “Okay. We're even now. Or, technically, you owe me for the second transfusion, but fuck it. You got Primus's innermost fucking energon. That's good enough for me.” She opened her chest and tucked the vial inside. “That one's for Esmeral. Hide the other two in the most secret place you can. She might search your frame. She'll definitely search your subspace compartments.”

“Wait,” said Jackpot. “Give her this one.”

Shadow Striker switched the vials. “Why?”

“Look at it.”

Shadow Striker held it up to her eyes. The vial had a tiny crystal at the bottom, scarcely visible against the golden liquid. “Oh. Heh. I like how you think. Maybe she'll blow herself up from the inside with it.”

“Yeah.” Jackpot opened his chest. He tucked the last two vials into the folds of his disfigured spark chamber. Shadow Striker watched, expression faintly horrified. “One for me and one for Roulette. Don't worry,” he said. “That's where I always store the best stuff. The vials _just happen_ to fit perfectly into the grooves of my fucked up spark chamber.”

“Pff.”

“If she searches my chest, she probably won't look _behind_ my spark chamber, right? That's where they're slotted in. It's a weird angle.”

“She won't be the one searching. It'll probably be Acid Storm who does,” said Shadow Striker. “But no. He'll just take a little peek. His eyes may linger.”

“Bleh.”

“Why don't you drink yours now?” asked Shadow Striker. “I would. Tell me what it tastes like.”

Jackpot thought of the remnants and the beasts. “I... kinda wanna know what will happen to Esmeral when she drinks it. She can go first. Just in case she turns feral or remnanty.”

“Good idea.” Shadow Striker smiled her not-very-nice smile. She turned and led the way down the tunnel. “Can you still feel the crystals' fields?”

Jackpot focused. “Yeah.”

“If you concentrate _really_ hard, you can feel along them out a ways, like echolocation tech.”

Jackpot didn't have any experience with that. “Uh. Sure.”

“It's not as fine a visual as echolocation, but it's better than seismographic.” Shadow Striker strode down the tunnel, limping. It was then that Jackpot finally noticed half her kibble had been ripped away. The bleeding edges were melted with acid in lieu of proper cauterization.

“Hey, uh. Did any of the beasts attack you? What did I miss?”

“Of course they did,” she said. One eye flicked with lenses. The other was pale. “Three beasts chased us.”

“And you... killed them?” 

“You don't have your drill club, do you?”

Startled, Jackpot patted his sides, as if expecting it to appear in a custom-made sheath. “No.”

She grinned. “It's through two beasts. Got 'em both with one stab.” She mimed poking her eye out. “Squish.”

“Holy shit.”

“And the third one choked on my canopy kibble.” Shadow Striker pulled something from subspace. It was a beast's head, dripping golden blood, its eyes glassy. “But I got a take home prize.” She patted its mane-like plating back. “You'll look good on my wall.”

“Oh my god,” said Jackpot. “You're fucking scarier than Roadgrabber.”

“Pff. You're just noticing that _now?”_ Shadow Striker returned the beast head to subspace. “I don't have to skulk around and flash a black diamond to advertise what _I_ am. The beasts behind the three I slew _returned to the spark chamber_,” she said smugly. “God called his guardians back because he knew otherwise I would slaughter them _all.”_

“Damn.” Jackpot didn't know if that was true, but he sure as hell wasn't going to argue. “You should get yourself a golden beast head tattoo. God guardian slaughterer.”

“Hah!” She laughed dismissively, then looked thoughtful. “Hmm...”

Jackpot followed her, silently, letting his frame do what repairs it could and trying not to think about the vials jingling next to his spark.

~~

The trek back to the surface was much faster than the journey down. Shadow Striker took full advantage of her new mapping ability. “I'm going to route us back to the tunnel where the blockade was,” she said. “I don't want Esmeral to guess we've been enhanced in any way, so to speak. Try to play up your injuries. I'll comm ahead. She'll send someone to meet us there.”

“Why?” asked Jackpot. “Why don't we just sneak back and say, 'here, glitch. Here's your fucking energon'?”

“Protocol,” said Shadow Striker. “Plus, I wanna see who shows up. I think I know who it will be. If Esmeral really did send us down here to die, then she'll be surprised we made it back. She might order whoever meets us to take the vial and then kill us in the tunnels.”

“Fantastic,” said Jackpot. “But you can fight anyone she sends, right?”

“Do you even have to _ask?”_ Shadow Striker made a fist. It was cracked and spattered with several different colors of blood.

“Hah. No. I don't.”

~~ 

“You _survived.”_ Acid Storm stood at the broken barricade. His clean plating was especially shiny next to Jackpot and Shadow Striker's broken, bloody frames. Acid Storm's wings fluttered with a mixture of disbelief and disgust. His ocular ridges quirked upwards, highlighting the perfect, holographic make up around his eyes. He wrinkled his nose. 

Jackpot instantly hated everything about him.

“You have it?” asked Acid Storm.

“I do,” said Shadow Striker.

“Give it to me.”

“No.” She glared at him. “I'm delivering it to Esmeral myself.”

After a tense moment, Acid Storm shrugged. “Okay. Follow me.” He looked Jackpot up and down. Acid Storm smiled. He had fangs. His wings flicked, a tiny tilt intended to flatter the mech he addressed. “You're bleeding at the knees.”

“Fuck off,” said Jackpot.

The smile vanished. Acid Storm stepped forward, arm raised, but Shadow Striker planted her hand on his cockpit and pushed him back.

_“No,”_ she said.

Acid Storm sneered. “Don't touch me, _malform.”_ He shoved her hand off, whipped around, and strode down the tunnel.

“Holy shit,” whispered Jackpot. “You could waste him. _Waste him_ right the fuck now and he doesn't even _know_ it-”

“Your map sucks!” yelled Shadow Striker. Acid Storm responded with a lewd wing gesture. “Hmph.”

After walking through miles and miles of tunnels lined with crystals, it was almost off-putting to see the spray painted symbols again. The tunnels echoed with the sound of mechs traveling and something else that Jackpot heard now: the deep ringing of the giant crystals. They rang to the rhythm of a sparkbeat etched into his processor.

They followed Acid Storm back through the maze of tunnels to Esmeral's lair. He was incredibly annoyed that neither of them could transform. They strolled at their own pace. Once they hit the main tunnels, Jackpot thought they might take an alternate route. But all the mechs speeding by pulled over for them and patiently waited for them to limp around. 

Pride blossomed in Jackpot's chest. He and Shadow Striker had done it. They'd _done_ it! Done the _impossible!_ He couldn't wait to tell Bluestreak. Walking beside her, injured as he was, Jackpot felt what he'd felt long, long ago, when he had first joined Swindle's family.

~~

“Welllllllcomme baaack.” Roadgrabber snickered, holding the door open for them. Acid Storm strode past him, chin high. Shadow Striker went, “pff,” and stalked in. Roadgrabber hissed at Jackpot as he entered.

Jackpot didn't flinch. He stared Roadgrabber in his mean yellow eyes. They were dull in comparison to the yellow flames in the remnants' helms. “You don't fucking scare me. Shadow Striker's the scariest mech on the planet and she's on my side.”

“Hehhhhhh. Siiiiiidesssssss.” Roadgrabber lurched into the shadows.

“You're _here.”_ Esmeral's melodious voice cascaded through the cavern. But as majestic as it had been before, now it sounded hollow and weak to Jackpot. It was nothing like the sparkbeat of Primus himself.

“We are,” said Shadow Striker. She stood before Esmeral, arms crossed over her chest.

“And you have it?”

“We do.”

The other guards looked at Shadow Striker warily, their armor flashing in the lights of the lanterns.

“Disarm her,” said Esmeral.

Shadow Striker didn't move as one of the guards took her gun. Her frown merely deepened. “Is this how you greet your most trusted bodyguard and your guest? The _only_ mechs who traveled down to the heart of Cybertron itself and returned alive?”

“A precaution,” said Esmeral dreamily. “Show me my prize.”

Shadow Striker opened her chest, the plating screeching and grinding over itself. She pulled out the vial and held it up. The bodyguards pressed closer. Esmeral's gasp echoed through the chamber.

“It's _real,”_ she breathed.

Shadows Striker's eyes flashed. “You sent us to do an impossible task. You sent us to _die.”_

“I sent you on a mission. If you died, that would be your prerogative,” said Esmeral. She snapped the fingers of her free hand. Acid Storm snatched the vial from Shadow Striker.

“Search them for more.”

Shadow Striker snarled as two guards grabbed her arms and pulled them back. Acid Storm shone a light inside her chest. When he was satisfied there was nothing inside, he opened her subspace compartments. She glared at him as he pulled her belongings out.

He sneered at her specimen case, her rations, her extra ammo. He yelped when he pulled the beast head out. She grinned at him. Acid Storm flicked his wings and tossed the beast head aside. It was followed by a few other prizes, each more gruesomely removed from its owner than the last.

“Nothing of _value,”_ Acid Storm announced finally. The guards let go of Shadow Striker and she stooped to gather her things.

Jackpot startled as the guards appeared behind him and restrained him in kind. Acid Storm smiled. “Open up,” he said, “or I'll do it for you.”

Jackpot bit back his response and opened his chest. To his surprise, Acid Storm stuck his hand in.

“I love this grounder frame,” said Acid Storm. “Such a tasty vessel.” Jackpot shuddered as Acid Storm ran his hand along the inside of his chest. The plane mech's nasty smile twisted. “What the hell is wrong with your spark chamber?” His fingers scratched at it.

Jackpot squirmed. “It's deformed,” he said. “Stop touching it!”

_“Ew.”_ Acid Storm's perfect brows knit together. “Wait. What is that?” 

Jackpot watched his fuel gauge as Acid Storm gripped one of the vials. _C'mon_, he thought. _Go down! Take five percent, ten percent! I don't care! Let him think it's part of my spark chamber._

“There's something in here,” said Acid Storm.

“Remove it,” said Esmeral. 

Acid Storm gripped the vial and tugged hard.

“Augh!” Jackpot lurched forward, his fuel gauge at last ticking down, but because the thin walls of his spark chamber managed not to break.

“Aha,” said Acid Storm. He held the vial up beside its twin. “They did smuggle another.”

Esmeral's bestial eyes narrowed. “Seize her.” Shadow Striker protested as the guards grabbed her again. “Search him for more.”

Jackpot opened his subspace compartments immediately, trying to draw attention away from his spark chamber.

-10%

Acid Storm slammed his chest shut and investigated his subspace compartments. The last vial was safe.

Shadow Striker's eyes flashed. 

Acid Storm glared at the contents of Jackpot's compartments. He pulled out clean vials, junk food wrappers, empty concentrated energy drink bottles, a few pictures of Bluestreak that Jackpot had taken the one time they had gone to a light club for fun and not work. There was a deck of cards, darts missing their tips, betting chips, a few shanix, and a bunch of datapads containing racy romance stories. “Nothing else,” said Acid Storm, at last. Jackpot's arms were freed just long enough to pack his things away again.

“Fools,” said Esmeral, as Shadow Striker and Jackpot were forced to their knees. “Bring the vials to me.”

Acid Storm activated the thrusters in his heels and flew to Esmeral. He held the vials up to her beast eyes. “It doesn't register on the gamut,” he said. “But it's definitely energon.”

“Open one.”

Acid Storm studied the vials. Jackpot wondered if he could see the little crystal at the bottom of one of them. It was hard to spot if you didn't know it was there, but he might suspect something if he saw it-

-2%

Acid Storm didn't see it. He snapped the cap off one of the vials. Its needles glittered. His wings fluttered appreciatively. “A stunning batch.”

Esmeral sniffed the air. “Sparkling's energon... interesting. Taste it.”

Acid Storm hesitated. Then he brought the needles to his mouth and licked one. He made a face. “It's flat, dull. Wouldn't be a winner at the parties.”

“Purified energon has very little taste,” said Esmeral. “Do you _feel_ anything?”

“No.”

Esmeral smiled. “Open the other vial and give them to me.” Acid Storm obeyed. As she tipped the first vial back, he retreated to the ground. 

Jackpot raised his runner's lens. Esmeral's frame lit up with dozens of colors, most of them pulsing around the eye-bomb. The golden blood of Primus went down her throat and disappeared in places where her plating was too thick for the light to shine through. It spread along her biolights, burning away the previous fluid. She gasped and the room filled with the scent of sparkling's energon. The gold made its way to the eye-bomb, rushed through the parasitic biolights there, and sparked. As one, the room tensed. 

“It feels better,” said Esmeral dreamily. Her fingers twitched. The eye-bomb's multiple colors went out, one by one, consumed in gold. 

Jackpot's spark leapt. _It worked! It's healing her!_ He could barely contain his excitement at the prospect of his hidden vial doing the same for him. One of the guards holding his arms back smacked him for wiggling.

The rest of the golden light spread partway down Esmeral's torso before thinning out invisibly.

“You need more,” said Acid Storm. “It's not enough to go through all your lines.”

Esmeral drank the second vial. Golden light flashed through her- and something else, too. Jackpot bit his lower lip. The tiny crystal beamed like a star, obvious and discrete as it went down her throat. 

“Wait, boss-”

“There's something in it-”

The bodyguards, who had also employed their runner's lenses, shouted together and waved their arms. Esmeral, unable to see her own frame, frowned. “What?” 

The tiny star bounced around inside her torso until it lodged in place. It sparkled for a moment, then exploded in an ocular-searing flash of light. Esmeral doubled over, screaming, wrenching her melted arm and wing from the wall. The ceiling cracked.

The bodyguards released Shadow Striker and Jackpot and sprang into action. Jackpot reset his visor and lowered the runner's lens. Half the guards swarmed Esmeral, trying to bend her broken plating inward so she wouldn't bleed out. Golden energon splashed across their frames. The other guards frantically sprayed the cracks in the wall with stabilizing foam.

“Whoa-!” 

Jackpot yelled as Shadow Striker threw him over her shoulder. She ran out of the chamber, tucking her gun back into its holster. 

“Whoa, whoa!” Jackpot said. His fuel gauge ticked down as he bounced across her back, not smashing his face into it. “I can run by myself! Put me down! Don't jostle the other- huh?”

Jackpot had thought Shadow Striker would take them the hell out of the lair, but instead, she was ducking down side tunnels. Tunnels with doors and keypad locks and placards. They weren't going away from the complex. They were heading further in.

“Hey! Where are you taking me!” Jackpot shook the remains of her kibble. “Go the other way! Go _out!”_

“Shut up!” She turned a few corners and stopped at a door. She set Jackpot down and tapped furiously at the keypad. He watched, utterly perplexed. “Why isn't it letting me in! This is the medical code!”

“We gotta _go!_ Where's the exi-”

Shadow Striker pulled out her gun and shot the door. Its middle blistered and bubbled. She ripped a piece of flooring up and used it to force open a hole in the door. When the acid had barely finished hissing, she shoved Jackpot through.

“Hey! What are you d-”

“Shh!” Shadow Striker ducked through the hole and slammed the flooring against it. It melted, creating a patch.

“They're gonna know we're in here-”

Shadow Striker grabbed Jackpot and pointed the gun in his face. “Give me your vial.”

His lines went cold, a shock that rocketed through his frame and froze him in place. Shadow Striker glared. Jackpot found his vocalizer. “B- but it's mine! I need it!”

She touched the tip of the gun to his nose. “Most mechs don't get asked twice. _Give it to me!”_

Shaking, Jackpot parted the plates of his chest. “W- why-”

“Hurry up!”

Jackpot pulled the vial from the back of his spark chamber. Disbelief coursed through him. After all they'd been through? “I thought we were friends!” He cried. “At least allies-”

Shadow Striker snatched the vial from him.

“You know the price I pay! You know what this means to me-”

“Shut up! Move!” Shadow Striker motioned with the gun. 

Jackpot's spark sank into despair. He'd just lost his family to Swindle's betrayal, and then risked his life multiple times to get Primus's blood, and it was going to cure him, and now Shadow Striker was-

Shadow Striker's field flashed with shock. Her face twisted into a look of horror.

That startled Jackpot out of his despondence long enough to follow her stare. He finally registered the room they had broken into.

The smell hit him first. Old disinfectant. Then the faint white lighting from above. It was a small medical bay with a berth in the center. Thick monitors crowded around the bed, coils of wires going every which way. There was a mech on the berth, the same frame type as Shadow Striker.

She was dead. 

Definitely extremely dead and had been for a very long time. Her biolights were painted on, with a pinch of glitter sprinkled into the paint to make them look alive. Her eyes were black, her field gone, her armor brittle and grayed.

Roulette.

Shadow Striker fell to her knees next to the bed. Blood smudged the floor. “No! _No!_ How did this happen?!” She touched Roulette's side. The plating crumbled. _“No!”_

Despite Shadow Striker's betrayal and the acid gun in his face, Jackpot felt a sting of pain for her. “Maybe it happened while we were undergr-”

“Of course it didn't!” Shadow Striker's eyes welled at the edges with tears. Angrily, she wiped them away. “She's been dead for years! Look at her!” 

He couldn't deny it. “But if it's been years, why didn't you see before?”

“They never let me in this room! I was only allowed to look in from above!” She pointed up, where an observation deck could be seen beyond the tinted glass ceiling. “From there she looks... she looked... alive!” Shadow Striker slammed her fists on the medical berth. Roulette's body jostled, parts of it disintegrating. “They _lied_ to me! This whole time!” 

The monitors surrounding the bed were ancient, cheap readouts, looping the same recorded biometrics over and over again- spark beat, energon levels, temperature. “Damn,” Jackpot said softly.

“Those fuckers!” Shadow Striker pointed the gun at Jackpot, then set it down. “Don't fucking move!” She pulled the top off the vial and held it over Roulette's rotted mouth.

“Wait! Don't!”

Shadow Striker's hand shook. “Why! Give me one good reason why!”

“The remnants!”

Tears dripped down Shadow Striker's face. “What about them!”

“You know what happens when a dead being comes into contact with Primus's blood! You saw it! We both saw it! She'll come back a monster!”

“No!”

“Her spark left a long time ago! If you pour the blood into a sparkless body, it'll become a remnant! You saw it with your own eyes!”

Shadow Striker screamed. Her field poured out with rage and grief. Her hand shook. The blood sloshed up and down the vial.

Something banged on the door.

“We- we gotta get outta here,” said Jackpot. “Get up! We gotta go!”

Shadow Striker wailed again. Her hand tilted. The blood ran to the edge of the vial-

**Bang!** The patch in the door cracked.

“You know what will happen if you pour that-”

“Shut up!” Shadow Striker wiped her eyes. “Here! You're right, okay! I fucking know it!” She shoved the vial into his hands. 

He chugged it down before she could change her mind. Warmth washed through him, gathering in his chest. He had no time to savor it, however, as Shadow Striker pushed him towards the bed. “Help me get her out of here! She deserves better than this! Take her feet!”

“I-” Jackpot watched helplessly as his fingers went through Roulette's plating. Her feet crumbled.

Shadow Striker grabbed Roulette's shoulders and pulled up. She wailed again as her amica dissolved into dust in her hands.

The door burst open.

“Fuck _off!”_ Shadow Striker sprayed the door with acid, a long, long stream of liquid, from the top of the frame all the way down to the bottom. Metal hissed and bubbled. A chorus of tortured screams sounded. The room filled with an acrid stench.

“Fuck,” Shadow Striker said. “Fucking hell.” She wiped tears from her face. Dust streaked in lines across her cheek. Shadow Striker scrabbled at Roulette's remains. “There must be something solid here. Something I can take! Where are the stones you collected?” Shadow Striker ran her fingers through the dust. “Where is the jewelry I gave you?!”

“I'm sorry,” said Jackpot, shaking, eyeing the acid gun. “I don't think it's there.” The vision of Shadow Striker destroying one of Primus's golden beasts in a fit of rage came to his mind. The dying screams at the door didn't help. “We really _really_ gotta go. Right now. Esmeral's entire army is outside that door. I know you're badass but you're also really emotionally compromised right now. We need to _go.”_

Shadow Striker hauled herself up onto the medical berth, scattering the remains of her amica into a black cloud. With a roar, Shadow Striker punched the ceiling. Glass rained down. Jackpot covered his helm with his arms.

“Move your aft!” Her vocalizer was thick. Shadow Striker jumped up and pulled herself into the observation room above. She stuck her arm down and reached for him. _“Move!”_

Jackpot grabbed her hand and scrambled up after her.

~~


	4. Epilogue

Jackpot jumped his way along the shore of the Sea of Rust. It was a chaotic mess of jagged, metal slabs. Reddish water welled up and receded between them. It stank. He moved carefully, taking his time so he wouldn't slip. 

He hadn't seen Shadow Striker in a few weeks. They had escaped Esmeral's lair and gone different ways without any parting words or plans to reunite. He hadn't been surprised to hear from her, though. Or that she had asked him to meet her here.

Shadow Striker nodded when he jumped down beside her. She was holding the specimen book open. Her frame had been repaired, mostly. The missing kibble had been replaced and paint thrown over everything without stripping the previous layers away, giving her plating a rough texture. Her silver engine bore deep scars. Jackpot flicked his runner's lens up. Her tattoos were gone. 

She looked out over the sea. In the distance a titanous creature swam lazy circles, the rust streaming off its scaly metal hide. She reset her vocalizer. “Thanks for coming. You were the only person I knew who would understand.”

“No problem.” 

Two of the containers in the specimen book held the same colored sample. One was labeled “Roulette.” Shadow Striker pulled the unlabeled one out. “This was all I could gather of her. It stuck to my legs.”

Jackpot nodded soberly. He didn't add that he had washed a similar amount of Roulette from his frame after their escape. It seemed crude.

She held the container out to him. He took a pinch of dust from it.

“Here we are, The Sea of Rust,” said Shadow Striker. She dumped Roulette's dust out unceremoniously into her palm. “We finally made it. I wish you could see it.” She tossed the dust into the sea. It tinged the surface blue, was carried around in eddies before sinking beneath the waves.

Jackpot followed with his pinch. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to say anything. Shadow Striker's eulogy seemed succinct enough. He erred on the side of silence.

Shadow Striker's biolights flickered mournfully. After a few minutes, she tucked the specimen book away again and brushed dust from her palm. “There. A bit of her here and a bit of her always with me.” She sighed. She turned to Jackpot. “Your tattoos are gone.”

“Yeah. And yours.”

“Yes.” Shadow Striker headed away from the sea, back toward the access road. She scowled at the broken ground, careful not to step in the tide pools.

Jackpot followed. “Once I was attuned to the crystals' fields, I couldn't stand being in the tunnels anymore,” he said. “The huge ones _throb.”_

“They do.” Shadow Striker shook her head. “Gives me processor aches to go underground now. I'm gonna travel aboveground a while. See what happens. I heard about a movement that's supportive of all kinds. Says you're more than your alt mode. I like that. Gonna check that out.”

“Sounds good,” said Jackpot. 

Shadow Striker glanced back at the sea. “I'm sad she's gone. My spark aches. But she's been gone for so long. Even when I thought she was there, she really wasn't. I was chained to the hope she would get better. But she never would. I feel... I feel free, in a way. She would want me to move on. She'd be glad I'm not stuck doing Esmeral's dirty work anymore. Roulette always said I should fight in the gladiator games.”

“You'd do really well there.”

“Yeah. We'll see. And you?”

“I, uh, never went back to Swindle. Never messaged him, nothing. I think he figured out that I quit on his own,” said Jackpot. “I convinced Bluestreak to quit, too. He was in Swindle's family with me.”

“Yeah. I remember him. Bouncy.”

“Yeah.” Jackpot smiled. “I didn't really internalize the death rate for runners til you pointed it out. I don't want him to die. He deserves better than that. I got a delivery job for one of the light clubs I used to stalk. Got myself a place, a little hole in the wall. Kinda hoping he'll wanna move in with me.” Jackpot sighed. “Probably not, though.”

“Give him a present,” said Shadow Striker. “You wanna borrow my beast head?”

Jackpot laughed. “I don't think that will impress him.”

“Screw him, then.”

“No, I mean, it'll give him the _wrong impression.”_

Shadow Striker cogitated on that for a moment. “A magazine of bullets?”

“He doesn't have a gun!”

“Pff,” said Shadow Striker. “Runners.” But her eyes had a shine to them that Jackpot hadn't seen before. It was something approaching good-natured ribbing. He reset his visor. Surely he had seen that wrong. “What did Primus's blood do for you?” she asked.

Jackpot brushed his hand over his chest. “Healed me up. Spark chamber is the right shape now and it's lined with the proper metal. I can go days without eating, just like a normal mech. I even took my fuel gauge off my HUD.” He shook his head in disbelief. “My frame feels better than ever before, but my processor needs to get used to it.”

“Does your luck still come at a price?”

Jackpot stooped and picked up a piece of metal. He tossed it at a pile of rust. It careened wildly, completely missing its target. “This time, the luck was the price.”

“Aww, you lost it?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Ehh... yeah. I gotta be extra careful now. I almost got hit crossing the road the other day. I never used to look both ways. Never needed to. But I'm just a regular mech now.”

“Pff. There's nothing regular about us.” Shadow Striker side-eyed him. “Does your spark go off-beat sometimes? At night?”

“Yeah.” Jackpot hadn't offered any explanation to the medics that had scanned him recently and said that the insides of all his plating and his spark chamber were etched with beautiful, swirling patterns. “It's scary, but also soothing, in a _til all are one_ kinda way.”

Shadow Striker nodded. 

“What happened to Esmeral?”

Shadow Striker grinned. Her kibble moved in little mocking motions. “Primus's blood healed the eye into her hand. It's not a bomb anymore. And she can see out of it. Which is fucking weird.”

“Whoa,” said Jackpot. “Yeah.”

“But the tiny crystal really fucked up her insides. She's not stuck to the wall anymore but she can't go far. The golden blood ran out before it could heal the damage the crystal did. I heard it blew a hole in her spark chamber.” Shadow Striker smiled down at Jackpot. “It'll probably be a _while_ til she can get more of Primus's blood. The rest of her bodyguards have mysteriously suffered grievous injuries.”

“Huh,” said Jackpot carefully. “Imagine that.”

“Uraya's underground system has broken up,” said Shadow Striker. “The heads of the families are in disarray. I heard Swindle tried to challenge his lateral partners. It's only a matter of time til Deathsaurus hears about it and makes his move. And then Esmeral will lose _everything.”_

Jackpot's visor flashed. “You say that like you planned it.”

Shadow Striker said nothing but her field hummed with amusement.

They reached the access road. It was long and bare, not a single mech in sight.

“I was thinking about the crystals,” said Jackpot. “About how the giant ones must be really old. They don't bubble and ooze out slime. They must be cut off from Primus's circulation system.”

“So?”

“So, I wonder if parts of the planet are dying. Remember how the slime went around the rust in the tunnels?” Jackpot pointed at the Sea of Rust. “Maybe that used to be living metal, but it got sick. And there's no blood flow there, so it rusted.”

Shadow Striker shrugged. “Don't care.”

“Okayyyyyy, what about this. Do you think if someone liquified the crystals and mixed them with the slime, they'd get Primus's blood?”

“Hmm.” She tilted her head. “Maybe. But I'm not gonna be the one doing it.”

“Yeah. Me either. But it's something... _interesting..._ to keep in mind. For the future.”

She nodded. 

An awkward silence passed between them. There was no squelching or ringing or roaring beasts to fill it.

“See... you later?” Jackpot ventured.

“Yeah. Probably.” Without so much as a wave, Shadow Striker transformed and screeched down the road.

“Goodbye to you, too,” said Jackpot. As he stared at the dust trail she left, he realized he had just seen her _transform_. He hadn't registered it as her turning inside-out. It was a proper transformation. Just different from his own. “Hmm.”

Jackpot transformed, himself, and headed the opposite way. As the Sea of Rust faded from sight, he thought of his afternoon plans.

Bluestreak had agreed to meet him for lunch. Jackpot wasn't clear if it was a date or not. He hoped it was, but it was okay if not. He wanted to enjoy himself aboveground in a quiet place with a mech whose doorwings bounced when he got excited, and whose voice was louder than the memories of crystals ringing and remnants screaming.

Jackpot smiled to himself. Yeah. That sounded really good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to Yam, again, for the lovely pics, and to you all for joining me on this adventure! Hope you enjoyed =)


End file.
